Meet Micknai Arefaine (she/they), an award-winning cultural organizer, consultant, and facilitator. She is a founding member of the Radical Imagination Collective, an annual gathering for radical organizers to explore alternative ways of living together. As an extension of her commitment to birth justice, Micknai is a doula with the Community Doula Program (CDP) and a curriculum developer with the CDP-Community College Democratizing Doula Training Project.  She holds a master’s degree in Applied Anthropology from Oregon State University where she was instrumental in launching AYA-Womxn of Color Initiative, the first-ever safe and supportive community for and by women of color at OSU. She also served as vice president of the Black Graduate Student Association and vice president of Social Justice for the Coalition of Graduate Employees (Local 6069).  

Her graduate research was conducted with her community of women in Northern Ethiopia where she learned how they model, express, and reflect the values of community, trust, care, stability, and futurity through their perceptions and sentiments regarding social and political change. She enjoys her trips to Ethiopia, reading comic books and speculative fiction, long phone calls with friends and family, and spending time in the forest, river, and ocean.

​She has been honored with numerous awards, including the E.C. Allworth Cultural Awareness Leadership Award and Scholarship