How do we remain alive to one another’s beauty and humanity, despite the pull of comfortable insularity and narratives that divide?
How do we abolish needless cruelty? The greed of a few and the complicity of many result in unnecessary mass suffering. How to get out of this hellscape?
How do we forge global solidarity to win dignity and joy for all? Democratizing joy is the ultimate justice. How to unite—across identities, politics, cultures—to own collective liberation as our shared project?
These are the questions that drive me.
(Formal bio at the bottom.)
Photo: Patrick Ainslie
Over the last 15 years, I’ve explored these questions through different lenses, roles, and vantage points. Starting as a journalist, ethnographer, and cultural producer, then over time, as an designer, organizer, implementer, and facilitator, I’ve worked alongside grassroots activists, community groups, governments at all levels, artists, international agencies, think tanks, social movements, and media organizations to fight for structural justice.
In this work, my commitment is to centering the voices of those who have been historically oppressed, and to craft narratives, initiatives, and infrastructure to help their visions become reality.
Along the way, I stood up new initiatives, influenced policies, designed services, and ran programs on a range of issues including public health, education, economic justice, humanitarian aid, gender equality, press freedom, criminal justice, democratic renewal, and media justice.
Photo: Emma Gardner
My meandering path was driven both by a curiosity about different theories and approaches to social transformation, and by a sense that each discipline I learned and each community I stood with had some, not all, of the answers.
This work took me to over 30 countries, learning from humans very different than I to better understand their hopes and dreams. My travels have taken me to another 30 more, where countless kind souls have shown me generosity, given me care, and shared with me their truths.
What I’ve learned: Our desires are shared. We all want dignity, a fair shake, and a better life for our children than we had ourselves.
We are all teeming with brilliance and drive—but the card we drew in the lottery of life determines who has the privilege of realizing their potential. Today, my political education continues, through a feminist and decolonized lens, and centered in experiences of the global majority.
Photo: TEDxDumbo
As I traveled between refugee camps and the White House, from villages of malnourished infants to gatherings of the global elite, I grew increasingly disoriented. One day, I’d be comforting a mother in rural Nigeria after her fourth baby died of diarrhea; the next, I’d be leading a meeting at UN headquarters addressing global inequality. In trying to make sense of the gulf between these worlds, I found myself in a perpetual state of dissociation.
Countless reports and presentations—including those I wrote and gave—reassured me that these experiences were connected. But over time, my suspicions grew. My ethnographies of “powerful institutions” showed me that despite their vast resources and good intentions, their structures were optimized to maintain the status quo.
In my organizing and community work, I saw that despite abundant love and creativity, we were forever in a state of resistance and repair.
We denounced the moral bankruptcy of our world, yet struggled to shift or topple the institutions that maintained it.
And through it all, I saw that we were all hurt and dejected. As a result, we see possible collaborators as threats, and we listen to one another mostly to find flaws. We are increasingly invested in our own rightness and others’ wrongness.
These challenges are existential. We cannot afford to operate from a place of insularity, division, and fear.
We need to stand in solidarity and work in community.
This is my work. While I still dabble across various fields, I am committed to helping diverse communities come together to tackle our thorniest challenges.
As a writer, I tell stories that reveal the historical roots and human costs of injustice—and that illuminate paths out. I draw on my experience running initiatives for change to diagnose why certain efforts fall short, and to examine efforts with true potential to transform our world.
As an activist, I work to build power among and across historically oppressed communities, on issues of economic justice, anti-imperialism, and mutual aid. This work is grounded in a deep commitment to healing justice and global solidarity.
As a transdisciplinary designer and facilitator, I create and hold space for searching and difficult conversations. I help enemies and “stakeholders” build transformative connections. I translate between worlds, from sortition to social sculpture, somatic abolitionism to movement journalism.
I guide communities to rally around big, brave, beautiful dreams—and to nail down the nuts and bolts of how we get there.
I believe in a future of radical love, active democracy, and structural justice—getting there requires all of us.
We must nourish our hearts, care for our neighbors, and fight for our kin everyday.
I do this work humbly, with joy, and in community. I do it with you.
FORMAL BIO
Panthea Lee (she/they) is a writer, activist, and transdisciplinary designer / facilitator working for structural justice and collective liberation. Her practice centers on elevating the voices of communities who have been historically oppressed, and crafting narratives, initiatives, and infrastructure to help their visions become reality. She does this work joyously and in community, grounded in deep commitments to decolonization, healing justice, and global solidarity.
Panthea is currently a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity and the Digital Civil Society Lab. From 2010-23, she served as the co-founder and Executive Director of Reboot. Panthea organizes with multiple formations on issues of economic justice, anti-imperialism, and mutual aid. Her writing has been published in The Nation; The Atlantic; In These Times; Harper’s Bazaar; Fast Company; Stanford Social Innovation Review; VICE; and MIT Innovations.
Panthea has helped organize coalitions fighting for dignity in over 30 countries, working from outside and within institutions of power. Trained in ethnography, design, and mediation, she is skilled in surfacing and weaving the magic of diverse actors—community leaders, artists, healers, historians, activists, economists, politicians, lawyers, technocrats—and helping them unite and mobilize around common cause. She has facilitated gatherings for grassroots movements, global coalitions, and Obama-era Presidential Initiative that yielded bold new efforts to protect human rights defenders, fight public corruption, strengthen participatory democracy, reform international agencies, and drive media equity and innovation.
Panthea's award-winning work has been featured by Al Jazeera, CNN, and the New York Times, and in the collections Designing the Invisible and Design for Social Innovation. She has lectured at Harvard University, Columbia University, McGill University, The New School, New York University, and the School of Visual Arts. She is a frequent speaker on issues of justice, democracy, and civic imagination, and has presented to audiences from activists to legislators in over 15 countries.
She has served on the jury for international competitions hosted by United Nations Alliance Of Civilization, United Nations Development Program, UK Research and Innovation, Racial Equity 2030, and various foundations. She currently serves on the boards of The Laundromat Project, RSA (Royal Society of Arts) US, People Powered, and DemocracyNext.
Panthea was born in Taiwan, spent formative years across Canada, and after a fair bit of hopping around, now gratefully lives on the stolen and unceded land of the Munsee Lenape, colonially known as Brooklyn, United States.
My dreams and my work are only possible because I stand on the shoulders of my ancestors,
learn from visionary elders and kin, and work in and alongside community. I bow in gratitude
to my cherished teachers and beloved community, who include:
Aarathi Krishnan, adrienne maree brown, aja monet, Akaya Windwood, ALOK, Ana Polanco, Anand Pandian, Anasuya Sengupta, Aruna D’Souza, Alex Sardar, Audre Lorde, Audrey Tang, Aurora Levins Morales, Ayana Young, bell hooks, Beza Seife, Bryan Stevenson, Candy Chang, Cassie Robinson, Chioma Agwuegbo, Claudia Chwalisz, Corey Chao, David Graeber, David Mosse, Dissenters, Erica Kochi, Farzana Khan, Fatou Wurie, Gabor Cselle, Gabriella Gomez Mont, Garnette Cadogan, Georgia Frances King, Giulio Quaggiotto, Harsha Walia, Heather Lord, Healing Justice London, Hera Hussain, Imandeep Kaur, James Reeves, JD D’Cruz, Jezz Chung, Johannes Weidenmuller, Joshua Haynes, Julian Aguon, June Jordan, Kate Reed Petty, Katherine Maher, Kenyatta Cheese, Kemi Ilesanmi, Kidus Asfaw, Kimberly Alidio, Lao Tzu, Malkia Devich-Cyril, Mari Nakano, Mariame Kaba, Micah Sifry, Minal Hajratwala, Mohammed El Kurd, Mohammed Maikudi, Nadia Firozvi, New Constellations, New Universals, Nkem Ndefo, Ocean Vuong, Octavia Butler, Olúfẹ́mi O Táíwò, Paul Farmer, Playground Annex, Prentis Hemphill, Resmaa Menakem, rev angel kyodo williams, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Rose Longhurst, Rusia Mohiuddin, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Sabrina Hersi Issa, Samir Doshi, Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, Shahana Hanif, Sloan Leo, Staci Haynes, Thao Nguyen, The Laundromat Project, Thich Nhat Hanh, Thomas Hübl, Tina Layton, Tricia Wang, Troels Steenholdt Heiredal, Tyson Yunkaporta, Wide Awakes, WOW Project