This week, we continue our series celebrating Black History Month with a spotlight on another amazing Black leader Voqal has the honor of working with, Kandace Montgomery.
Montgomery is a Black and queer organizer, facilitator, and strategist working to expand the collective ability of individuals to build power that transforms systems and people. Currently living in Minneapolis, she has spent the last decade developing programming, training, and strategies that center the lives of people of color in local, state, and national organizations. By centering and unapologetically prioritizing the lives and leadership of Black communities, she aims to develop the solutions necessary for transformative change.
Montgomery’s political home rests with Black Visions Collective, where she is the director. In this role, she is currently leading local strategies to engage young, Black, queer and transgender people, and their families, to build cultural and political power capable of transformation and ending systemic violence. Montgomery is the former lead organizer for the Black Lives Matter Global Network, and a trainer with Momentum, a training community dedicated to teaching and learning the craft of popular movements fighting for justice.
In addition, she is a co-owner of the Purple Palace Project, an imaginative experiment in affordable, community-centered housing that has successfully provided a home for over a dozen queer and transgender people of color involved in social change while also cultivating spaces of joy and fellowship. Montgomery graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a Bachelor of Science in Public Health. She is also a gardener, proud cat-mom, food enthusiast, and Octavia E. Butler fangirl.
We are excited and privileged to be able to work with leaders like Montogmery and look forward to her continued work to make Minneapolis a more racially and socially equitable place. For more information about Black Vision Collective, visit blackvisionsmn.org.