Radical Communicators Network

Shanelle Matthews partners with social justice activists, organizations, and campaigns to break down complex issues for everyday people and build narrative power for a morally just and dignified world. From Sierra Club and ACLU to Black Lives Matter Global Network and Aspen Institute, she has collaborated with influencers and changemakers to transform complex ideas into persuasive political messaging. Today, she is the communications director for the Movement for Black Lives, an ecosystem of 150 organizations creating a broad political home for Black people to learn, organize, and take action. In 2016, Shanelle founded the Radical Communicators Network (RadComms) to strengthen the field of strategic communications, as well as Channel Black, a program that prepares progressive spokespeople to make critical, real-time interventions through the media. In 2017, Shanelle joined The New School as its inaugural Activist-in-Residence. She is currently on faculty, teaching critical theory and social justice with an emphasis on Black resistance. She holds a degree in Journalism and New and Online Media from the Manship School of Mass Communications at Louisiana State University and is co-editing Framing New Worlds: Resistance Narratives From 21st-Century Social Movements (working title), a forthcoming anthology.