A lifelong actress and writer, Bree has always valued diverse stories and inclusion for all. She counts herself privileged to have graduated from Firestone CLC/Akron School for the Arts, an institution espousing those values at every turn. In addition to serving as Secretary of the c/o 2018 and being honored with Firestone’s Womanhood Award, Bree was a founder of Student Coalition Against Violence, which held an overwhelmingly successful walk out in March 2018 in response to the Parkland shooting.
She is preparing to enter her third year as a student at Capital University, where she majors in Art Therapy with a minor in African American Studies. Her goal is to join the 2% of Black art therapists and licensed clinical counselors and 7% of Black Ph.D. graduates. In addition to working as a tutor at a local after school center and advocating for minority mental health, Bree is primarily utilizing her seat on Capital University’s Student Government to advocate for reform of the university’s cultural pluralism class curriculum. Recently, she completed an independent study examining the parallels between traditional music therapy and the utilization of music within the black church.
In her spare time, she enjoys strengthening her skills as a playwright and novelist centering the stories of PoC.
Before high school, I was nothing like I am now. I was quiet, withdrawn, shy, and suffered in silence each time I saw another injustice against black people on the news. It wasn’t until I left home schooling and opened up at Firestone that I really started to let myself be known and speak out against any issue that came to my attention. It began with leading a school walkout against gun violence when the survivors of the Parkland shooting and every student living in fear of a shooting needed us to stand with them, and it only continued from there. Getting involved in school leadership, attending board meetings, staying up to date with social issues, speaking against injustice, and spreading the word became an every day normal. I’ve learned that I have to use my voice if I expect change to come, I have to use my actions to back my voice up, and I have to stay dedicated if I want my efforts to make any change at all. We are the change we’ve been waiting for, we just have to stop waiting. That’s why AMC isn’t just a one time thing for me, this is a lifetime commitment. We have to stick with it. We need to make change come. I don’t want this to end with me finding my voice, I want to use mine to help everyone else who feels silenced find theirs too.
