Co-Founder, Révolutionnaire | Former Co-Chair of City of Toronto’s Confronting Anti-Black Racism Advisory Committee | Valedictorian at Columbia University
Justice Faith Betty is the co-founder of Révolutionnaire. Justice was inspired by her sister Nia’s journey and the question of what it would look like if more young people with a dream of making the world a better place had access to the tools, networks, and information necessary to scale their impact. Justice is an alumna of the Dual BA Program Between Columbia University and Sciences Po Paris.
She graduated from Columbia as valedictorian with degrees in political science and law. Justice is also the Co-Chair of the City of Toronto Anti-Black Racism Advisory Committee, and the co-founder of Building Blocks (a social entrepreneurship workshop that has taught 300+ students across four continents). Previously she was a management consultant at McKinsey and Company, a youth delegate to the United Nations, and an intern for Arianna Huffington. She has been featured in Forbes, Global Citizen, Breakfast Television, Cityline, ET Canada, Essence Girls United, WWD, Black Enterprise, REVOLT, Fashion Magazine, Toronto Star, Top 25 Women of Influence, The Kit, and more.
Justice and her sister regularly partner with major brands on impact-driven collaborations. Their first Roots Canada collab sold out in under 24 hours and garnered over 27.3M impressions. The second collab sold out in stores across Canada, the US, and Taiwan and received recognition from influencers, athletes, and artists such as Janet Jackson, Deborah Cox, Tyrone Edwards, Ashanti, and more. The sisters followed their Roots clothing collab with the introduction of Meet A Revolutionary in collaboration with Roots, a series to introduce Canada to inspiring young changemakers. This Spring, they launched their first cosmetics collaboration with L’Oréal’s nail polish line essie to celebrate inclusivity and champion the power of representation. The collab was distributed across 1200 storefronts. In Spring 2023, they launched a national campaign with Rogers to highlight Canadian icons and the community causes and organizations they are proud to support to call on all Canadians to reflect on the difference we can all make, big or small in our communities and beyond.
Together with their team of 30 Gen Z community activists and leaders, Justice and Nia are building a future where every young changemaker can make their voices heard and drive action. Justice is regularly invited as a keynote or moderator for engagements for corporations, community organizations, high schools and universities.
TOPICS
Finding Your Spark and Turning Inspiration Into Impact
As we get older, the desire to dream and the will to wonder are often suppressed. As a result, many of us go through life searching for our passions and purpose and putting our dreams on a shelf. In this presentation, Justice offers her audience the inspiration, tools, and resources to put their dreams into action and create the reality they want for their lives. She reflects on her unique path to finding her purpose, including quitting her corporate job in the middle of the pandemic to build a youth-led movement. She encourages others to think about their dreams for themselves and the world, while equipping her audience with a framework to make those dreams a reality and turn inspiration into tangible impact.
Dreams Fuel Revolutions
History has taught us about the power of dreams, for it is dreams that fuel revolutions, and humankind has never conquered any new frontier without finding inspiration in something that was first planted. In this presentation, Justice begins with the historical significance of dreams and empowers her audience to take action in their community and beyond. Having an idea, a dream, or a goal, is fantastic, but how do you ensure that it is at its prime before you invest your time into it? How do you know when you’re ready to take the leap? Justice will reflect on her personal experiences as an entrepreneur building a youth-led movement to explore how we can all dream bigger and with purpose and combine our sparks of inspiration with our dreams to fuel revolutions.
Building an authentic brand
Justice and her sister Nia have built a youth-led movement grounded in celebrating diversity and empowering others to use their dreams to fuel revolutions. Alongside grassroots impact working with young people and community organizations, they’ve launched impact-driven collaborations with major brands grounded in an authentic commitment to community and impact. In this presentation, Justice will share what it takes to build an authentic and purposeful brand and the role your brand can play in both building a community and serving one.
The intersection between Artificial Intelligence, Art and Activism
Justice Faith Betty’s presentation will explore the power of the creative arts to inspire and catalyze social change and the evolving ways in which AI is being used to challenge racial and gender injustice. The intersection of AI, art, activism, and afrofuturism is a dynamic and constantly evolving field. Artistic activism, the creative power of the arts with strategic planning for social change, has a rich history that informs contemporary movements. In recent years, art and activism have become increasingly intertwined, and artificial intelligence is rapidly changing the nature of both of these creative processes for effecting change. AI is being used in digital art to generate unique and complex visual content, opening up new creative possibilities and allowing artists to explore new ways of creating art and amplifying calls to action. Through her presentation, Justice will draw on specific examples of how artists and technologists alike are creating innovative works that explore issues of identity, social justice, and technology, challenging our conception of history, whose stories should be represented and how, and reimagining the possibilities for progress in our lifetimes and beyond.
