I was born to Ethiopian and Eritrean parents who met while seeking asylum in Los Angeles. Both are of the horn of africa, but neither of them were born there, as my grandparents were seekers too. They studied and worked abroad before going to Ethiopia to raise my parents for as long as they could. The land of origins, war, migration, separation, repair, the practice of staying in relationship through rupture ∞ it has shaped everything for me.

I move between roles — mediator, facilitator, artist, land tender, journalist, and fire tender— because the work itself isn't one thing. Some days it's facilitating a workplace dispute. Some days it's foraging clay for a sculpture. Some days it's accompanying someone in grief after rupture, helping them find words they've been avoiding or remember practices they’ve been severed from. Guiding them to tend their inner fire.

This life practice, that I’m currenty naming / love in the cracks /, is interested in how rupture, when tended with care, can become a site of connection, accountability, and renewal. Through a multitude of forms and materials. 

I understand this as a lifelong practice — one that asks me to stay present to what is cracking, and to what is trying to come into being.

This work is not held alone. It is not original to me. It moves through me. It is shaped by teachers, collaborators, and traditions that continue to inform how I listen, facilitate, and practice. Many of my most intimate teachers are of the more than human world. 

I honor the guidance of human teachers I've learned from directly, including Dr. Carrie Brown, Char (Azad) Kasza, Florie St. Aime, Meenadchi, Nkem Ndefo, Shilpa Jain, and Terry Parris Jr. I'm also deeply influenced by the work of adrienne maree brown, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Bayo Akomolafe, Sarah Schulman, Sobonfu Somé, and many others whose teachings continue to shape my understanding of relationship and transformation.

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I currently serve as Engagement Director at Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration, a model with HÉLÈNE, and Public Art Commissioner in Nevada City. The sister town to where I now live most of the year now. In Grass Valley, California. 

I lived in New York City for the duration of my twenties, in deep study and searching for self. On my depature, I helped build THE CITY's Open Newsroom project, bringing journalists and communities together in public libraries to rebuild trust in reporting.

The COVID pandemic sparked my move to Grass Valley, California. Where I tended land as a child. I arrived in the middle of one of the worst wildfire seasons the region had seen. That sent me on a years-long path of repairing my relationship with fire, both the external element and my internal flame.

The land here helps me tend a process-oriented art practice — working with foraged clay, plants, and minerals to make objects, sculptures, and installations shaped by the land I live on. I've collaborated with Bear Yuba Land Trust and the California Heritage Indigenous Research Project on site- and time-specific pieces in Nisenan and Maidu Territory.

My institutional training spans journalism and storytelling, restorative justice, mediation, shared leadership and facilitation, and trauma-informed somatic practice — through decades of study across systems and leadership (AORTA), herbalism and fungi (Herban Cura), decolonizing food systems (Soul Fire Farm), natural site specific building (Earthen Shelter), ancient art making and natural pigments (Wild Pigment Project), and guidework (Gatherwell). I hold an M.S. in Media, Culture and Communications from NYU and a Masters in Community Engaged Journalism from CUNY.

I am stretched between Ethiopia and California.