Dr. Sawsan Jaber

Dr. Sawsan Jaber is an award-winning educator, activist scholar, and author whose work lives at the intersection of academic rigor, radical love, and educational justice. A first-generation everything, she teaches, writes, and leads with the conviction that dignity is not optional and neither is brilliance. Whether in classrooms, keynote stages, or community spaces, she creates environments where students reclaim their humanity, cultivate agency, and learn to question, disrupt, and rebuild the systems around them. She is the coauthor of Pedagogies of Voice: Street Data and the Path to Student Agency and a contributor to scholarship on critical pedagogy, literacy, and social justice.

For Dr. Jaber, education is an act of resistance and possibility. Her journey has been shaped by reclaiming parts of herself that systems once asked her to silence, and that reclamation has only strengthened her commitment to speaking truth with courage. She draws inspiration from the unapologetic freedom fighters who came before her and believes that the harder oppressive systems push back, the more essential it becomes to lead with authenticity, advocacy, and hope for future generations.

As an Acosta Institute Fellow, Dr. Jaber hopes to be part of a community where she can continue growing alongside others committed to healing-centered leadership and transformative education. She looks forward to co-creating spaces that nourish courageous truth-telling, deepen collective learning, and strengthen the work of building a more just and liberatory future for children, educators, and communities.