Denise Shanté Brown is a designer and wholehearted advocate for the mental and emotional wellbeing of oppressed communities. Rooted in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, she received her BFA in Graphic Design at The Art Institute of Atlanta in 2012. Her growing curiosity about the generation of deep change later evolved her visual background into an experiential practice of designing and facilitating empathic experiences in public spaces.
Through co-creation with imaginative changemakers in the south, Denise has held reflective space for interventions around integrated inclusivity, creative power, personal storytelling, human rights awareness, and radical self-acceptance. She values her intuitive introversion and honors the ways in which conscious, compassionate activism inspires her actions toward personal, collective, and systemic change. Denise will continue disrupting societal pressures and exploring how art and design can be realized as transformative tools for healing, with the capacity to mobilize people-powered impact.
Thesis: How might we cultivate a compassionate culture that supports the mental wellbeing of Black women?