Whitney Benns

Whitney Benns is a lecturer on education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where she teaches the negotiation workshop and fugitive negotiation. Benns is a consultant who works with individuals and organizations to build communication and relationship capacity in negotiation, feedback, and conflict management. She works with a range of clients: nonprofit, for profit, and government, with an emphasis on work with education and social justice organizations. In her work as a consultant, facilitator, and educator, she is committed to working to bring the potentialities of generative conflict, honest communication, and fugitive strategy to folks building power and accountable community to move towards liberatory futures.

She also serves as a board member for the Justice Catalyst Fellowship, and is involved in deep work supporting ArchCity Defenders, a holistic legal advocacy organization that combats the criminalization of poverty and state violence, to align internal relationships, culture and communication with their vision of liberation for St. Louis.

Previously, Benns has served as an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center. She has addressed and coached students and alumni at Harvard University, Tuck School of Business, Tufts Gordon Institute on Leadership, MIT Sloan School of Management, Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Law School.

She has written articles for the Atlantic Magazine and The Guardian, and OnLabor.org. Her work is included in Readings for Diversity and Social Justice, 4e (edited by Maurianne Adams, et all. 2018), and in the Harvard BlackLetter Law Journal Volume 35, Spring 2019.

Benns has a B.S. in political science and international relations from the University of Utah, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.