Nayantara Sen

Affiliate Consultant/Trainer

Nayantara Sen (she/her/hers) is a cultural and narrative strategist, a network builder and a racial justice educator and trainer. She is the Director of Programs and Cultural Strategies at Real Food Real Stories in California, and a Senior Fellow at the Pop Culture Collaborative. She is the co-creator of the Interaction Institute’s Advancing Racial Justice in Your Organization (ARJ) workshop series, along with IISC Senior Associate Cynthia Silva Parker.

Previously, Nayantara led the narrative and cultural strategies program at Race Forward, where she built a national program and training team for racial equity in the arts and cultural sector, and designed and developed curricula, workshops and programs for racial justice. Over the last 15 years, Nayantara has trained thousands of activists, artists, educators and non-profit professionals at the intersections of social justice, arts, culture, narrative and organizational change. She is the lead designer for Race Forward’s Butterfly Lab for Immigrant Narrative Strategies, which brings together activists, organizers, artists, and changemakers to build new and just narratives for immigrants, migrants and refugees. She was previously the program designer and manager of the Racial Equity in the Arts Innovation Lab in New York City, which was a city-wide intensive that equipped 60 arts and cultural organizations with racial equity practices and prototypes.

Nayantara is an affiliate consultant and trainer with the Interaction Institute for Social Change in Boston, and sits on the training bench for Race Forward and the Center for Racial Justice in Education in New York City. She has authored toolkits and resources to support cultural strategies and organizational transformation for equity, such as her Cultural Strategies Primer, and Creating Cultures and Practices for Racial Equity: A Toolbox

In all her work, Nayantara aims to build cultures and narratives that create healing, justice and power for communities of color. Nayantara has a M.A in Postcolonial Literature, Social Movements and Creative Fiction Writing. She lives in Oakland, California and loves wandering the redwood forest on long hikes.