Team

Justin Laing is the founder of Experimental Interventions (EI) and has spent thirty years using his Black Studies degree from the University of Pittsburgh to help begin a range of organizations and formations, across a variety of cultural entrance points, including

• The Village 4 an Afrikan Cultural Center, which provided natural foods and cooperative buying opportunities as well as community holidays like “Fred Hampton Day,” “Marcus Garvey Day,” and Kwanzaa;

• Nego Gato, Inc, providing African Brazilian music, dance and capoeira;

• Miller African Centered Academy Parent Teacher Association, which successfully fought to keep the school from closing the first time it was put on the closing list,

• One Hill CBA, which organized a community benefits agreement between the Hill District, the Pittsburgh Penguins and local municipalities,

• Arts in the Hill District, a ten year coalition of arts organizations and artists in the Hill District,

• the Omega Dr. Carter G. Woodson Academy, an almost fifteen year program of Omega Psi Phi’s Iota Phi Chapter providing out of school education based on Dr. Carter G Woodson’s “The Miseducation of the Negro”,

• and the Black Socialist Formation, a formation building Black socialist practices in Western PA.

This work stems from Justin’s resonance with a core contention of the Kawaida Theory, which offers that the greatest critique is an alternative and Kwame Ture’s guidance that almost anything worth doing on behalf of Black liberation is done through an organization. Maybe most important in the context of E.I., these experiences have allowed him to be in the position of facilitating hundreds of decision making meetings and supporting consensus building through a variety of conflicts, contradictions and tensions.

Before beginning EI, from 2018-2025, Justin was the principal consultant with Hillombo LLC, which provided evaluation, anti-racist education and faciltation for foundations and arts organizations. Before Hillombo, Justin was a Senior Program Officer for Arts & Culture at The Heinz Endowments. In addition to his BA in Black Studies and Political Science , Justin has a Master of Public Management from Carnegie Mellon University.

Today, Justin organizes with the Pittsburgh Black Worker Center and is on the editorial committee of Let’s Get Free’s Daughters Magazine. Justin is on the coordinating committee of the Black Socialist Formation, supports the leadership of the National Black Liberation Movement National Unity Initiative, and is a member of the Black Alliance for Peace. Lastly, and at the very crux of the matter, Justin is the son of Clarence and Susan Laing, the husband of Ebony Ross and the father of Kufere, Etana and Adeyemi Laing and an an initiated member/priest of the Lukumi Tradition via Ile Asho Funfun and his godfather Baba Bill Lowman. To see more of Justin’s writing, please go to www.justlainguages.com