The Wellbeing Series

AfroSoul: Dreams of Freedom, Racial Reconciliation, and Healing Justice featuring Andrew Williams

Wednesday, October 20
12 to 1:30 p.m. Central
Learn more and register

Inspired by his African American ancestor’s heroic efforts to attain freedom and racial justice, Andrew Williams will invite us to enter a conversation about the shifting cultural, spiritual, and political meanings of blackness across the Americas. Drawing from his work with diverse African diaspora communities, Andrew will highlight the beauty and power of a comparative perspective and transnational solidarities in mapping a path forward toward Black freedom, transformative justice, individual and collective healing, and racial reconciliation.

About Andrew Williams

For over twenty-five years, Andrew has worked at the intersections of cultural anthropology, educational equity leadership, community-based learning, and global education as a teacher, advisor, college administrator, and non-profit leader. As a cultural anthropologist, Andrew’s teaching and research has focused on the cultural politics of blackness within the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean. His community-based work and activism has included projects focused on racial justice, climate change, environmental justice, food security, and health equity in both the U.S. and international contexts. As Executive Director of the Higher Education Consortium of Urban Affairs (HECUA) Andrew was steward of a diverse set of U.S. and international off-campus study programs focused on racial and economic justice, indigenous rights, peace-making, environmental sustainability, and imaginative approaches to some of the most pressing problems of our time.  Williams recently served as Assistant Vice Chancellor of Student Success, Engagement, and Equity at the University of Minnesota Rochester where he provided strategic leadership for institutional efforts to center equity and holistic public health as crucial elements in the university’s vision of undergraduate and graduate health sciences education. In his current role as Hazelden Betty Ford’s first Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Director, Andrew leads the execution of Foundation’s DEI strategy at a national level, serves as an internal diversity consultant to key executive leaders, drives efforts to create a more diverse, equity-minded and inclusive organization, and partners with key colleagues and community stakeholders to create opportunities to serve more individuals, families, and communities from historically underrepresented and marginalized backgrounds.