Shaunteri Skinner (‘16) is a creative activist, content curator, licensee & author from the westside of Atlanta, Georgia. She has worked in the television, digital & print media industries for over five years. Her writing focuses on selfhood and community wrapped in a free-formed narrative approach. She received training at Georgia STAND-UP’s Organizing Institute and assisted with the strategic planning of civic engagement campaigns from voter registration drives to on-site protests. She has developed several initiatives, including ‘Build in Black’ to raise funds for local Black businesses and organizations. She wrote and published her first poetry series, “The Words That Make Me,” in 2017. She has also been featured in print and online publications such as Genre: Urban Arts, Sirens Zine, Polemical Zine & more. While attending the University of Georgia, Skinner studied Digital & Broadcast Journalism at the Grady College of Journalism & Mass Communication. She interned at WUGA News and worked as a library assistant where she curated a visual and textual project on self-expression for the Peabody Decades series at the Richard B. Russell Special Collections Libraries. She received the University of Georgia Diversity Leadership Scholarship in 2012 & was recognized as a Who's Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges Honoree. She found her academic home at the Institute of African American Studies where she became a recipient of the Lee Roy B. Giles Encouragement Award in 2015. Further, she received a grant from the Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities (CURO) and traveled to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem to investigate the sociopolitical evolution of Malcolm X. Under the leadership of Dr. Carolyn Medine, she developed a senior thesis and presented her findings at the 2016 CURO Symposium. She earned her Master of Arts in Communication with a focus in digital media at the Queens University of Charlotte in 2018. Skinner continues to fight for her people and commune with creative visionaries who share similar passions. She aims to found a nonprofit organization that serves underrepresented individuals and locales through advocacy and direct action in the best fit capacities. She strives to build and sustain safe spaces for Black women and men to thrive all while being their true selves. Black liberation is her calling. Her main goals in life are to engage & empower. Students interested in reaching out to Shaunteri may email shaunteriwrites@gmail.com.
