About

Barbara Gross, Equity Program Specialist

Barbara Gross has decades of experience as a community organizer, racial justice facilitator, coach, and trainer.  She has provided strategic support  and capacity-building to education justice organizing groups, coalitions, and unions organizing for anti racist, culturally responsive, and equitable schools in NYC and across the country. 

Most recently, as Deputy Director of the Education Justice Research and Organizing Collaborative (EJROC), of the NYU Metro Center, Barbara co-designed and co-led “From Integration to Antiracism (FIAR)”, a six month training and coaching series for public school parents, now known as “Building Equity Together (BET)”.  She has expertise and sees great value in facilitating affinity spaces for White people, and especially appreciates doing that in alignment with affinity spaces for Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC).

Before NYU, Barbara served as a principal associate in Community Organizing and Engagement at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform (AISR) where she helped to found the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS), a national network of youth, community organizing groups and labor unions, joining forces in the fight for equity and high quality public schools for all. 

She was co-founder and co-director of Mothers on the Move (MOM) an adult literacy teacher in a beautiful Freiren-based progam in the Bronx, and a long time ago, learned community organizing at ACORN.

Barbara has four (now adult)  children and has years of  experience as a NYC public school parent as well as a private school parent of children with special needs. She has a B.S in Education and Social Policy from Cornell University.