Beatriz Beckford is an artist, educator, and strategist who exemplifies experienced and intentional leadership in movements for social change. With over two decades of experience, she has built a practice that integrates campaign architecture, coalition building, liberatory education, arts-based organizing, philanthropic strategy, and community development — grounded in the conviction that liberation theory, transformative justice, and the creative wisdom of communities are the essential foundations for building beloved societies that can thrive across the spectrum of difference.

As a contributing author to the Vision for Black Lives - the Movement for Black Lives' landmark policy platform - and a lead co-architect of the Community Safety Working Group, Beatriz has helped shape the national policy infrastructure behind the Community Safety Agenda, a joint project of more than 70 organizations advancing safety rooted in people and communities rather than policing and prisons. She co-founded the National Black Food and Justice Alliance, a national formation dedicated to Black food sovereignty, land rights, and self-determining food economies. As National Director of Youth and Family Justice at MomsRising, she led nationwide campaigns against the school-to-prison pipeline and youth and criminal justice issues, developing the multilayered advocacy frameworks and community alliances that drive policy change at scale.

Her arts practice is inseparable from her organizing. As Artist in Residence at the Art Institute of Chicago's Homan Square, and through integrative popular education programs developed across organizations including Parsons, Brooklyn College, NYU Law School, Girls for Gender Equity, and the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, Beatriz has consistently brought creative process and design thinking into the center of social change work.

She serves on the boards of The Action Lab and Sweet Freedom Collective, where she supports movement infrastructure and land-based community work, and Impact Justice, where she supports accountability and healing for incarcerated community members. Beatriz holds an MA in Women and Gender Studies from Loyola University Chicago, an MA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a post-graduate certificate in Fundraising from NYU. She has trained with Rockwood Leadership, the Center for Third World Organizing, Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity, the Feminist Organizing School, the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, and the Social Justice Leadership Institute, and was a CoreAlign Speaking Race to Power Fellow — though she counts her most formative training as the relational praxis, deep community work, and kinship circles that have shaped her life's work.

Her commitment to amplifying grassroots wisdom and organizing alongside communities hardest hit by systemic oppression is marked by creative approaches, principled leadership, and an integrity-driven work ethic that has earned trust across movements, institutions, and communities for more than twenty years.