Anya Booker named UCLA Arts’ Associate Dean & Executive Director for AEDI
Booker will lead anti-racism, equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts for the school
Anya Booker joins the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture as Associate Dean and Executive Director for Anti-Racism, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (AEDI), effective Monday, May 16.
In this newly expanded full-time role, Booker will play a key role on the school’s leadership team. She will partner with school leadership, including academic department chairs and public arts unit directors, to advance the UCLA Arts strategic plan, and will guide the Anti- Racism, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (AEDI) Council. She will also collaborate with university partners and external stakeholders to develop and carry out initiatives that contribute to our strategic goals, will coordinate initiatives across the school, and will serve as our school’s Equity Advisor to UCLA’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Office to help facilitate coordination of campus-wide diversity and inclusion best practices.
Booker is an administrator, professor, and artist who centers and advances the best practices of anti-racism, equity, diversity, and inclusion in higher education, media arts, entrepreneurial innovation, and non-profit consulting. Her in-depth understanding of AEDI principles and practices will help our school better represent, reflect, and celebrate our diverse community.
“I am both honored and thrilled to join you in doing the work of delivering AEDI. I intend for you to know me as a partner, collaborator, and accomplice who addresses and redresses the effects of all -isms – from the simple to systemic – and who creates sustainable, transformative opportunities for us to be and thrive as who we are and all that we are,” said Booker about her new role. “I have come to think of AEDI work as an art in and of itself, and artists, scholars, students, and teachers as holding the greatest capacity to create profound changes; from the vague to the vast, and as such, we make way for previously untold contributions. AEDI work (or art as it were) insists on our depth as much as our shared fiat lux. I am here to serve as a steward of both.”
Booker comes to UCLA from Cal Polytechnic San Luis Obispo as the lead coordinator for the Black Academic Excellence Center. There, she created and evaluated the AmeriCorps VIP Fellowship to engage alumni and community members to support students through mentorships and career-boosting internships. She also created the Black Beyond Belonging exhibition and invited Black artists to display their work for the school’s community and beyond.
While initiating and implementing meaningful institutional changes in university planning, strategic vision, program and curriculum design, Booker has also served as faculty member at UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, Scripps, and Texas Southern University, as well as in the California Community Colleges system. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in television and film, English, and African American Studies.
Booker holds a BA from the University of California, Berkeley; an MFA from the American Film Institute; and an MFA in Creative Writing with a dual concentration in Fiction and Creative Nonfiction from Antioch University. As a filmmaker, playwright, and author, she has several films, musicals and books in development, and recently became a member of the Robey Theater Playwrights Lab.
“I am thrilled to have Anya joining our team in this new role,” said Brett Steele, dean of UCLA Arts. “I, along with the entire school community, look forward to working closely with her to advance anti-racism, equity, diversity, and inclusion in all areas of the school as we work to transform the school’s climate and culture.”
You can learn more about Booker by reading her full bio.
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