About Sady

“There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have. Find it.”

— adrienne maree brown

Sady Sullivan (she/her/hers) is a skilled oral historian, public historian, educator, somatics practitioner, and consultant providing specialized services to organizations, communities, families, and individuals in New England and New York City.

Throughout the Northeast, Sady has partnered with organizations, communities, and individuals to create diverse multimedia resources, including digital archives, audio walking tours, curriculum kits, museum exhibitions, books, and digital publications. Her oral history interviews are used as primary sources in K-12 curricula, walking tours, podcasts, and public history exhibitions at esteemed institutions such as Brooklyn Historical Society, New-York Historical Society, El Museo del Barrio, and Brooklyn Navy Yard BLDG92.

Sady's expertise has also led to the creation of educational tools, including the resource guide titled "If You're Thinking about Starting an Oral History Project," featured in the publication "The City Amplified: Oral Histories and Radical Archives" by The Center for the Humanities, CUNY Graduate Center in 2019. Actively involved in the Oral History Association, Sady has served on the task force that revised the OHA Principles and Best Practices in 2018. Sady has taught oral history workshops and semester-long courses at various institutions, including the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY; Museum of Chinese in America; The Laundromat Project; The New School; Columbia University; Brooklyn College; Yale University; LIU Brooklyn; Weeksville Heritage Center; Brown University; NYU; Recess Art; and Oral History Summer School.

Sady holds a Master's degree in Cultural Reporting & Criticism from New York University and a Bachelor's degree in Psychology and Women's Studies from Wellesley College.

Sady is a queer European-American (white) cisgender neurodivergent woman who comes from a mixed-class background and is grateful to understand from lived experience a range in socioeconomic status from food insecurity to expendable income. Sady is committed to collective liberation, and unraveling Whiteness and the American myth of progress. She lives with her kiddo in rural Western Massachusetts on Nipmuc, Pocumtuc, and Wabanaki (Dawnland Confederacy) land.

Browse Sady's Project Gallery

Movement Lineages

Sady grew up with Second and Third Wave Feminist organizing and the inspirational leadership of Black Feminist writers. At Wellesley College, Sady learned from Feminist Relational-Cultural theorists that disconnection is the cause of personal and social pain and this continues to feel true. Sady’s activism is forever shaped by her early involvement as a teenager with the Aids Action Committee in Boston in the 1990s where she learned that joy and dance are inseparable from rage and grief. In addition, Sady picked up invaluable community organizing skills during her involvement with the American Friends Service Committee and others advocating for Peace following 9/11. Sady has participated in and organized many anti-racism / anti-oppression workshops over the past 25+ years and is grateful to so many teachers for this continuous learning and growth. Sady has also been profoundly shaped by her involvement in the vibrant queer punk feminist music scene and the sex-positive communities in New York City.

Sady practices politicized somatics (generative somatics) and is most excited about bringing more embodiment to her oral history work.

Process

Sady specializes in collaborating with communities and organizations committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, as well as decolonization efforts. Her expertise lies in deconstructing the ways in which Whiteness has influenced and shaped these institutions throughout their history. Through her skill in designing and producing ethical and relationship-based oral history projects, Sady helps preserve complex and multi-layered histories. By engaging in this process, institutions gain valuable insights that support their ongoing efforts for transformative change.

Additionally, Sady has collaborated with various family groups, private communities, and individuals to record and preserve oral histories. Employing a consent-based approach rooted in relational dynamics, she conducts narrator-led interviews while prioritizing the well-being and agency of the participants. Sady creates an environment of comfort and respect, allowing these stories to be shared and preserved with skill and care. She also incorporates embodiment practices to deepen the connection and understanding between the narrator and the oral history process.

In addition to her oral history consulting practice, Sady currently leads The Whiteness Project, an oral history initiative to be archived at The Tamiment Library and Archives that captures narratives of assimilation and the development of racial identity among white-identifying racial justice activists who practice Somatics. This project serves as an extension of the liberatory principles and aspirations that underpin her private consulting endeavors.

Visit the Project Archive further insights into The Whiteness Oral History Project and Sady’s past projects.