Valencia (Val) Clement is a Haitian-American artist, scholar, activist and entrepreneur from Queens, New York. At 18 years old, Valencia was awarded a Posse Foundation full tuition leadership scholarship to Vanderbilt University where she earned a Bachelors of Science degree from Peabody College. Her passion for social justice ignited during her years as an undergraduate as the contemporary civil rights movement gained traction. After completing her B.S ’16, she pursued a M.P.P in Higher Education Policy where she led Peabody Coalition for Black Graduates and worked in the college’s inaugural Equity, Diversity and Inclusion office.
She also independently published 7 collections of poetry on intersectional justice and solidarity titled “Pale. Pa Ale: Speak. Don’t leave,” “Sonje: Take your medicine, Tell your truth,” “Atansyon: The Colonizers have Brown Skin,” “Chan Desperans: The Journey to Justice,” “Santiman: Embodied & Endarkened Ways of Knowing,” “Lanmè: Wisdom of the Waters,” and “Grenn: Cutting to heal. Blooming Free.” Additionally, she published a vegan cookbook titled “Manje.” Most recently, her work has led her to establish “Ansanm Mutual Aid,” a mutual aid that distributes essential supplies to the unsheltered members of the greater Tempe community with the support of community donations.
Valencia completed her doctoral studies at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University in the Fall of 2022 where she studied Education Policy and Program Evaluation. Her research interests include decoloniality, curriculum studies, blues aesthetics, Blackness, gender studies, Black feminist philosophy, womanist social change theory and more. Her dissertation was published in December 2022 and is titled “Methodological Reparations: Queering empirical traditions and curricular approaches to address anti-Black racism, homophobia and transphobia in education.”