DR. ALAÍ REYES-SANTOS
ABOUT
Dr. Alaí Reyes-Santos is an independent researcher, writer, storyteller, consultant, and advocate who leads the team at Alai Community Consulting (ACC).
ACC's team enables capacity building through facilitation, workshops, research, strategic planning, project management, cross-cultural and targeted community engagement, event planning, organizational coaching, creative storytelling, accessible grant making design, and more. For the past decade, ACC has built a portfolio of exceptional and effective projects and programs with the non-profit sector, government, universities, emergency preparedness and response programs, funders, and social and environmental justice organizations. It is currently a National Policy Consensus Center provider, and, until recently, was a provider for the Environmental Justice Technical Assistance Center funded by the Environmental Protection Agency. ACC designs each project mindful of the specific needs and resources shared by clients and project partners. Previous clients and collaborators include: School Garden Project, Black Cultural Initiative, NAACP, Huerto de la Familia, Centro Latinoamericano/Plaza, Mobilize Green, the City of Eugene Climate Change Action Plan, City of Eugene's Middle Housing Equity Roundtable, Northeast Oregon Economic Development District, U of Alaska, Darmouth University, Kenai Food Connection (AK), Kake Climate Partnership (AK), Hoonah Indian Association (AK), Northwest Youth Corps, Pride in Numbers, Seeding Justice, Northwest Energy Coalition, and Upper Willamette Soil and Water District. Dr. Reyes Santos is also certified in the ThetaHealing Technique, a meditation practice that she deploys to support individuals and communities engaged in processes of self- and community healing and empowerment. She has experience accompanying people working in academia, health care, public service, social and environmental justice advocacy, and the arts. She provides holistic support to individuals completing writing projects and undergoing career transformations.
Academic Experience
For twenty years, Dr. Reyes-Santos has held research, teaching and administrative positions at University of Oregon. She has served as Professor of Practice at U of Oregon's School of Law, Associate Professor of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies, director of the Just Futures Institute and director of the Water Equity Fund at U of Oregon's Climate Solutions Center. An award-winning teacher, her Ted-talk “Building Intercultural Communities” is used in higher ed and popular education to initiate guidelines for dialogue across difference. She enjoys coaching teachers and administrators on effective and sustainable pedagogical and decision making practices in higher education, as well as junior scholars seeking promotion to tenure.
Dr. Reyes-Santos's commitment to public impact research, social justice, community engagement, and community-driven policy making, grant making and capacity building has led her to collaborate in a plethora of state-based, national, and international initiatives. In the United States and internationally, Dr. Reyes-Santos has collaborated with the Organization of American States, Centro Bonó (Dominican Republic), Ambiente y Sociedad (Colombia), Centro Pro Bono (Brazil), Afroindoamérica (Mexico), Chinook Indian Nation, NAACP, Euvalcree, Plaza, . . . She has been an invited speaker at Museu das Culturas Indígenas (Brazil), Universidad Autonóma de México, INTEC (Dominican Republic), Universidad de Puerto Rico, Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic), University of Leeds (UK), Oklahoma State University, Linfield College, Ohio State University, Hostos Community College, Oregon State University, the Society of College and University Planning's Annual Conference, Lewis and Clark University, Golden Key Honor Society's Annual Conference (Australia), among others. She has served on Oregon's Racial Justice Council's Environmental Equity Committee providing recommendations to the Office of the Governor, and is now a Governor-appointee to the Oregon Environmental Restoration Council. Two of her current collaborations include: 1. Borifuturos campesinos, which seeks to build on rural experience and knowledge to dream of social, economic, ecological, and cultural futures in Puerto Rico; 2. Cayuco Journey-seeking to revitalize and protect ancestral ways of traveling across waters. The community-action research project she co-founded and co-led for four years as a member of Oregon Water Futures Collaborative contributes to the articulation of a water justice agenda in the state and nationwide. After supporting a 530 million dollars water package, OWF moved to its second outreach phase in 2022 and completed a Water Justice Policy Framework; the framework informed the Drought Package passed by the Oregon Legislature in 2023, and a Water Justice Leadership Institute led by Verde. The innovative Water Justice Network emerging from within OWF's advocacy centers people of color, women, and queer leadership in the water sector. In 2026 this project has completed another round of community engagement and will soon disseminate its results through a public report and open-access StoryMap.
Awards and Recognition
Her approach to public impact work, teaching, and creative storytelling has earned her a variety of accolades, such as: 2020 Woman of Recognition (NAACP Eugene-Springfield); 2021 Mellon Foundation Just Futures Grant; 2022 Racial Equity and Sustainability Collaborations Award (Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education); 2022 Honorable Mention, Best Public Projects (Latin American Studies Association Digital Scholarship Section); 2022 Excellence in Teaching Sustainability (U of Oregon); 2022 Dominican Studies Institute Fellow. She is featured by Color of Water: Top Directory of BIPOC Water Experts; and, in 2023, in a competitive process, was selected to be in the planning committee for the National Academies of Sciences' “Integrating the Human Sciences to Scale Societal Responses to Environmental Change" workshop.
Dr. Reyes-Santos counts with an extensive portfolio of publications that include books, op-eds, academic articles, digital storytelling, and creative non-fiction. She is the author of Our Caribbean Kin: Race and Nation in the Neoliberal Antilles (Rutgers, 2015); and its commented translation in Spanish, Nuestra intimidad caribeña (Emergente, 2026), as well as co-author of Conocimientos ancestrales (Buho, 2021). The digital humanities project The Healers Project: Decolonizing Knowledge Within AfroIndigenous traditions-with Dr. Ana-Maurine Lara and U of Oregon Libraries-showcases interviews with healers and traditional ecological knowledge, ethnobotanical guides, and curriculum and bibliographical resources. Her bylines include: Bilingual Review, La Razón, Centro Journal, Revue Européene des Migrations Internationales, Callaloo Journal, Revista Estudios Sociales, HipLatina, the Jota Anthology, and the emergency-response digital storytelling site: The UO Puerto Rico Project: Hurricane Maria and Its Aftermath. For four years, she hosted a monthly column in The Register Guard. Her current creative non fiction propose a Black Diasporic approach to betrayals among kin emerging from racial, gender and environmental violence.
Approach
Her training as an Iya, Nana Nkisa, water steward, and co-founder of the AfroIndigenous ceremonial and environmental stewardship community Bohio Cibanani, informs how she leads research and conversations about social violence, power, and solidarity as community healing processes.
Education
Dr. Reyes Santos completed her BA in Humanities at University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez; and her MA and PhD at University of California, San Diego. She is currently a first year (part-time) student at the virtual JD program offered by the Richardson School of Law at University of Hawai'i.