Kristin Schwab
Kristin Schwab has been a frequent collaborator with AORTA since 2016. A Philadelphia-area native, Kristin Schwab is passionate about building community, uprooting white supremacy, and redistributing resources. As a middle-class woman of Irish and Pennsylvania Dutch descent, Kristin focuses her time on supporting fellow white people to find their stake and role in our liberation movements. Her work is fueled by her belief that another world is possible—one where we are all free, sharing power, and living joyous lives.
In the late 1990s, Kristin became politicized at the Institute for Social Ecology and in movements against privatization and free trade. Her younger years were spent in the streets at protests, on the land growing food, and in restaurant kitchens paying the bills. Her involvement in multi-racial cross-class movements of youth and adults working together to foster healthy and just communities through food inspires her work today.
In addition to facilitating with AORTA, Kristin currently serves as the Workshop Coordinator for The Organizing Center, supporting their efforts to train organizers in base-building skills that lead towards long-lasting systems change. She has been a frequent collaborator with AORTA since 2016.
Most recently, Kristin served as the Interim Manager for the City of Philadelphia’s Food Policy Advisory Council, where she managed a strategic planning process focused on building working class political power and a food system where all people can access and control their food, land, and labor. Previously, she held roles as co-op organizer for the Philadelphia Area Cooperative Alliance’s 20 Book Clubs, 20 Cooperative Businesses program, co-founder of Philadelphia Assembled Kitchen, and director of the Youth Empowerment Program at the Urban Nutrition Initiative in West Philadelphia, which supported the founding of Sankofa Community Farm. Kristin holds a BA in Individualized Studies with a focus in popular education and solidarity economics from Goddard College.
Kristin brings twenty years of supporting political education and leadership development within community-based and movement organizations, cooperative businesses, and schools. Her workshops and coaching facilitate democratic decision-making, collective governance, communication across difference, and analyses of systems of power. Her approach to facilitation is highly experiential and rooted in popular education.
In 2016, Kristin was a recipient of the Leeway Foundation’s Art and Change grant and a participant in the Catalyst Project’s Anne Braden Anti-racist Organizer Training Program for white social justice activists. In 2021, she participated in Rockwood Leadership Institute’s Art of Leadership Program. When she is not working with AORTA, you can find Kristin cooking food for her friends, family, and neighbors. Nothing brings her more joy than feeding our movements for change and bringing people together around a love-filled meal.