Lynn Ann Currier
Divest Invest Protect Advisor and Strategist
Ms. Currier is a youth advocate and anti-racism activist, educator, filmmaker, choreographer and mother. Currently, is the director of Skweda Solutions, and the Founder and Director of Haitkaah Social Justice Project and The Boston Arts Project. She holds a BA in Psychology from Adelphi University and an MFA in Film Production from Boston University. Being a Coosuk Abenaki and European-American mother that is from an ethnically mixed family, of Indigenous, African-American, and European-American members, her determination to make positive change continues to be inspired and driven by her love of her 22-year-old son and youth in general. All of her advocacy of the past 17 years, has been done while being a mother with virtually no financial support from outside sources, and often done swiftly and quietly, with no fanfare. Only the young people whose lives have been touched, improved and even saved through her love and bold relentlessness truly know the ripple effect of her work. Through Haitkaah and Skwed Solutions, she has worked tirelessly, doing whatever it took to protect young people of color whose safety and lives were at risk. Throughout her years of advocacy, she has worked with the FBI and State Department to bring an American pedophile in Haiti to justice; has done street outreach with gang-involved youth in Boston and has spent time in her home with many of these youth to understand how best to support them; has gone across the country to meet with NFL legend and activist, Jim Brown, and ex-gang members who have become effective gang interventionists; has advocated for many incarcerated human rights activists, including a youth who has been suicidal due to mental cruelty and beatings from DOC guards for 3 years; has done grassroots lobbying and organized many press conferences demanding an investigation of the MA Department of Corrections, police reform, and criminal justice reform; built relationships with Indigenous youth when suicidal; participated in prayerful resistance at Standing Rock Reservation, where she was almost killed by a concussion grenade thrown by police; has organized a team of activists and journalists to expose a children’s prison in Haiti; organized the feeding of orphans on the streets of Haiti after the earthquake, when UNICEF and Feed the Children refused to; and has grabbed a young Haitian orphan off the street in order to stop a security guard with a drawn rifle from shooting him. Through the Boston Arts Project, she has served mostly low-income youth of color in the Greater Boston area with a summer program, One Voice, and 20 years of artist residencies in schools, offering a broad range of classes in various genres. Over the years, Ms. Currier has spoken at numerous forums and venues including television, and radio broadcasts, press conferences, demonstrations, legislative hearings, and even in prisons. In the past year, she was invited four times, along with educators from around the world, to present papers on women and education at the Oxford International Forum. Currently, she is writing a screenplay on prison and criminal justice reform and writing a book on her life’s work, including how everyday people can fight racism.
