Mako Ward

Mako Fitts Ward is an educator, writer, facilitator and social justice advocate with over 15 years of experience teaching core principles of justice and social change to college students and advocating for racial and gender equity in communities around the country. Her scholarship engages the intersection of hip hop cultural production, urban music scenes, cultural labor and Black feminist placemaking efforts that impact contemporary social movements. Ward is the co-founder of Women Who Rock, a digital archive project at the University of Washington and a collective of musicians, media-makers, performers, artists, scholars and activists committed to documenting the role of women in popular music and the formation of cultural scenes and social justice movements. She has published in Huffington Post, The Conversation and Ms. and has published popular and scholarly essays on body ethics and aesthetics among women of color, media and gender images in popular culture, gentrification and cultural displacement and women’s political organizing. She teaches courses on intersectionality, gender and hip-hop, ethnic studies, the African diaspora, justice and women’s social movements.