Hey, I’m Ariel

I’m a queer, multiracial author, editor, digital media and marketing professional, creative director, activist, organizer, traveler, event planner, plant mom, consultant, and sometimes-poet based in Brooklyn, New York City.

I hold two degrees in publishing and currently serve as editorial strategy director at the Vera Institute of Justice, where I spend my days developing publications and content with the goal of ending mass incarceration in the United States. Before Vera, I spent eight years in different roles on the communications team at Lambda Legal, the oldest and largest LGBTQ and HIV civil rights legal organization in the world, where I ultimately served as deputy digital director.

I have also been a member of Wanderful’s team for nearly eight years, where I offer programmatic support and creatively direct our mission and vision. With Wanderful, I am a founding organizer and manage programming for the WITS Travel Creator Summit, an international gathering that brings content creators, industry members, and thought leaders together to learn, collaborate, and build a more ethical and diverse travel industry. My work at Wanderful also encompasses the Bessie Awards and Wanderfest.

My passion is for communication and expression, particularly in service of equity and justice. A child of the 90s, I have grown up fascinated by the ways in which storytelling manifests in art and in our hyperconnected world, learned to code HTML at 13, have edited for authors across the globe, and had my work recognized by Forbes, Refinery29, Teen Vogue, the Shorty Awards, and more.

In my professional life, I can often be found reading, editing, developing and deploying multichannel digital projects, working to create a cutting-edge event program, tracking and analyzing web traffic, and sending my team way too many memes.

In my personal life, I can often be found traveling just to eat (I’ll try (almost) anything once), marathoning Fixer Upper, trying to find the best brand of black tea this side of the Atlantic, writing under my own name, and attempting to pet every single dog I meet.

MY VISION

My world revolves around access and justice. I spend a lot of time thinking about what constitutes a “normal” body and how, in fact, normalcy is what is atypical, though we are conditioned to believe otherwise. Of course, when I reference bodies, I reference all the variances they contain: gender, expression, size, ability, race, ethnicity, age, and more.

What does true body liberation look like across the globe?

As someone with a love of exploring the world and seeing new places, I also spend a lot of time thinking about how, while travel can be a positive experience for many, the tourism industry has a long record of actively harming communities of color, in particular in developing nations (which are typically developing due to a history of colonization). The history of travel and “discovery” is violent and filled with colonization, forced displacement, and genocide. To travel and not look at the world through this lens — to not think critically about who has had access to travel, why they do, and whose voices are represented in the travel industry and in media today — is irresponsible.

What do borders mean when they were born from brutality? Why should some be able to access the world while others can’t? How do we transform this reality?

I hold these questions close to my heart in all of the work that I do.

SOME BRANDS & ORGANIZATIONS I’VE WORKED WITH