Rebecca Sumner Burgos (she/her) is a program manager and organizational facilitator with Lumos Transforms. She is also a Certified Facilitator of The Resilience Toolkit. She’s managed programs for the LA Compost, UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute, Healing Justice London, and So’oh-Shinálí Sister Project. In addition, she managed a culturally informed program to increase knowledge of the impact of trauma and toxic stress on mental health and build resilience among Muslim women of color in LA County and beyond.
She has also facilitated Lumos’ embodied trauma-informed resilience-oriented (eTIRO) approach and framework for organizations, including San Francisco Foundation, UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute, and LA County Department of Public Health.
She brings extensive experience working with hyper-marginalized individuals and communities to her role. She has worked as a community engagement coordinator, resource referral specialist, and ethnographer for diverse communities including the LGBTQIA+ community, the Latine community in New York and Chicago, and substance-using communities. She is also a founding member of Big Art Group, an avant-garde performance company, with whom she performed and toured in Europe and the United States for ten years.
Rebecca was raised in Puerto Rico and maintains a strong connection to her homeland. She returned to the island to complete a Master’s degree in Translation (Spanish <-> English) until Hurricane Maria pushed her to move to Chicago in 2018. She also holds a BA in English Literature and Anthropology from Princeton University and a Master of Philosophy degree in American Studies which focused on criminalized urban subcultures and how they express resilience individually and collectively.
Rebecca is passionate about re-imagining and re-creating the world we live in through everyday interactions and systemic change. She lives with her wife and their dog, Clyde, as an uninvited guest on Kiikaapoi land (outside of Chicago). She feels grateful to work with an organization that aligns with her values to create a more just and equitable world where we all thrive.