Julia Rhodes Davis is a producer, organizer, resource mobilizer and entrepreneur. As an owner of Oakland Yard Wine Shop and co-founder of Third Space Collective, she credits early experiences organizing climate disaster relief with small businesses with rooting her in the power of place-based community. 

Ever the non-traditionalist, Davis attended Columbia University’s School of General Studies while building a production company for social impact and fundraising events. At Production Collective and Citizen Engagement Lab, she built capacity with clients and partners for social impact, fundraising, and organizational effectiveness. Starting in 2015, with leadership positions at DataKind and Partnership on AI, she immersed herself in technology and society. 

Davis’ race and technology studies have been a way to investigate a glaring and contemporary example of the inequalities that she continuously explores, addresses, and seeks to repair. Her published work in AI Now has influenced the US Congress, the US Government Accountability Office, and the European Commission. She has appeared as a discussant with Hilton Als at UC Berkeley, and is an associate producer for the documentary feature Acts of Reparation. Working towards a truly representative multiracial democracy, she served as the Board Chair of Vote.org for seven years, reaching tens of millions of new and underrepresented voters. 

Inspired by her work on Acts of Reparation, Julia is expanding on the impact campaign she co-created to develop Circles of Practice, an organizing and storytelling project dedicated to building a culture of repair and supporting white folks into the work of repair and reparations. Through this work she also supports Pink House Pop Ups, an initiative dedicated to Black family history preservation.

Her ethnographic research on whiteness examines the ways that white supremacy is upheld by white people’s under-developed understanding of their own racialized identities. Davis’ work is animated by her cultural inheritance; she is the descendant of both anti-racist activists and Southern enslavers. Davis imagines a growing movement for healing whiteness, divesting from racialized capitalism, and towards human dignity and flourishing for all.