James Kass
Executive DirectorJames Kass is an award-winning writer, educator, producer and media maker. He is also the Founding Executive Director of Youth Speaks, a position he held for 21 years (1996-2017), and is widely credited with helping to launch a global youth spoken word movement, working with tens of thousands of young people from across the country - and helping launch close to 100 programs nationwide. James is an advocate for arts, youth, equity, access, and inclusion.
He joined KALW as Executive Director in August 2023.
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Chaos on its own can exhaust us, but chaos combined with organizing can transform us. -
The distance between power and precarity in this field is not just unjust, it is unsustainable. Those of us with connections and resources have to help close it. We need to radically expand who gets to tell the stories that define us, and where those stories come from. -
Too often, we identify the right conversation—about justice, belonging, democracy, equity—but elevate too narrow a slice of expertise to lead it. -
As America faces crises of democracy, economic collapse, and growing authoritarianism, the old models of philanthropic investment are no longer just ineffective—they’re dangerous. -
The Bay Area has one of the nation's richest histories of poetry. This conversation draws from the multicultural communities that continue to inspire the world.
