Rachael Zafer

A thought partner committed to social change.

I help justice-oriented individuals, organizations, and grassroots groups build capacity, creativity, and strategy. I specialize in resource development, start-up operations, internal and external communications, and graphic design. If your work is in service of collective liberation, I'd love to connect.

Curriculum

I develop comprehensive resources for authors, organizations, and publishers and have written reading and discussion guides for over 30 texts. My guides center deep reflection on social and racial justice, exploration of identity and accountability, and resources that encourage concrete action. Visit my curriculum page to download and use these free resources.

About Rachael

Rachael Zafer (she/her) has worked with organizations and grassroots groups committed to social change for over 17 years. She has collaborated and conspired with community organizers, spiritual leaders, artists, and writers across the country to inspire reflection, dialogue, and action. She is deeply committed to collective liberation, mutual aid, and abolition of the death penalty and the carceral state.
Rachael was the founding director of the Prison Education Program at New York University and was a co-founder of the Prison Arts Initiative at the University of Denver. She is a founding core member of Mourning Our Losses, a crowd-sourced memorial honoring the lives of people who died of COVID-19 while incarcerated in the United States. She has led hundreds of workshops and classes in prisons and jails in New York, Chicago, Michigan, and Colorado.
Rachael holds a Master of Public Administration degree from New York University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan. She is a trained yoga and meditation instructor, an experienced facilitator and public speaker, and a board member of the Ministry Against the Death Penalty, led by Sister Helen Prejean.

Clients & Comrades

Alliance for Higher Education in Prison

Care Based Safety

Detroit Peer Respite

gMoxie Consulting and Coaching

HarperCollins Publishers

Haymarket Books

Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab

Indiana Women’s Prison History Project

Interrupting Criminalization

Loevy + Loevy

Luna Philanthropy

Ministry Against the Death Penalty

Mourning Our Losses

PEN America

Penguin Random House

Planting People, Growing Justice

Project NIA

Proximate Strategies Consulting

Square Lightning

Survived & Punished

Texas After Violence Project

Unapologetically HERS

University of Minnesota Press

The Visiting Room Project

Let's Connect!

I offer free consultations and sliding scale rates for all projects.