Shakti Butler, PhD, is a visionary filmmaker, transformative educator, wisdom keeper, and activist. She has been developing
films, sharing curricula, and learning labs geared towards building equity internally, externally, and relationally. As Founder and President Emeritus of World Trust Educational Services Inc., she has produced five documentaries which have been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people (one clip alone has been viewed over 30 million times) around the world. They are The Way Home: Women Talk about Race in America; Light in the Shadows: Staying at the Table when the Conversation Gets Hard; Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible; Cracking the Codes: The System of Racial Inequity; and most recently Healing Justice, Interrupting the Youth-to-Prison Pipeline. These films are designed for dialogue. She served as consultant and adviser on the Disney animated film, Zootopia, which focuses on challenging bias and systemic inequity. World Trust’s clients span education, health, government, technology and faith-based organizations. Dr. Butler’s vision is of a world coming into wholeness, where transformative love and wisdom heal the human family from harm and separation. Dr. Butler’s passion is forging new ways for people to perceive and understand one another in keeping with the reality of our mutual interdependence. This requires the expansion of processes, skill sets, and practices that include repairing harm, deep listening, and abilities that enable us, as a species, to find alignment between our virtues, values, and actions. Practices of skills that generate deeper internal and external listening, strategic questioning, and radical imagination build connection and collaboration, in service to mutual wellbeing.
Dr. Butler’s lived experiences and beliefs are informed by her roots as a Caribbean mixed race, black person. Her meaning making processes uses history, analysis, and the arts to expand deep internal inquiry linked to systemic and structural change. The quest for learning and change must be ongoing and uplifting. Her vision is of a world coming into wholeness, where transformative love and wisdom move the human family away from separation and towards belonging.
