Amal Kassir

Keynote Speaker, Day 3

Amal was born and raised in Denver, Colorado to a German-Iowan Mother and Syrian Father. Two seemingly opposing worlds combined to grant Amal her lived experience. She spent years on her grandmother’s farm in Syria and enjoyed the sweetness of fresh parsley and ripe lemons.At home, in Denver, Amal designed her own undergraduate degree called ‘Community Programming in Social Psychology’. She argues that nothing can change without the solidarity of community; A notion that led her into the undefined territory of social justice activism. Her fiery spoken word poetry and story-telling activism is the result of her lived experience. The sadness, frustration seeps through every single word. The urgency to act now boldly resounds in her voice. But she never walks away without giving you a sense of her name. Her name, Amal, which means “Hope” in Arabic.