Tema Okun has spent over 30 years working with and for organizations, schools, and community-based institutions as a trainer, facilitator, and coach focused on issues of racial justice and equity. Dr. Okun currently works with the Teach.Equity.Now. collaborative which houses the Teaching for Equity Fellows Program currently offered at Duke University in Durham, NC, and Wofford College in Spartanburg, SC. The program works with faculty seeking to develop stronger skills both teaching about race and racism and across lines of race, class, and gender. She also facilitates, consults, coaches, and consults with leaders and organizations nationwide.

Tema was a member of the Educational Leadership faculty at National Louis University in Chicago and has taught undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral level students in educational leadership and education. She is the author of the award-winning The Emperor Has No Clothes: Teaching About Race and Racism to People Who Don’t Want to Know (2010, IAP) and the widely used article White Supremacy Culture. She is currently at work revising this article as a website which will launch in spring 2021.

Tema is a member of the Bhumisphara Sangha under the leadership of Lama Rod Owens. She is an artist, a poet, and a writer. She lives in Hillsborough NC where she is fortunate to reside among beloved community. Her current project is deepening her ability to love her neighbor as herself. She is finding the instruction easy and the follow through challenging, given how we live in a culture that is afraid to help us do either or both.