Pride Week Keynote Speaker Elle Hearns

Elle Hearns is an organizer, speaker, strategist, and writer. Elle is a cofounding member of the Black Lives Matter network, an organization formed with multiple local chapters as a political project in the wake of the murder of Trayvon Martin in order to explicitly combat implicit bias and anti-black racism and to protect and affirm the beauty and dignity of all Black lives. In her role before stepping down, she was formerly a strategic partner to BLM cofounders Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi and to local chapters of the organization as the former interim organizing director advocating for collaborative solidarity across the network and Black Liberation movement. She has been honored with the Young Women’s Achievement Award for Advocacy and Organizing by the Women’s Information Network, the Black Feminist Human Rights Defender award by Black Women’s Blueprint, and as a Woke 100 honoree by Essence magazine.