Rebecca Sumner Burgos (she/her) is a Program Manager with Lumos Transforms. She also supports the organization’s partnership development. 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 was recently married and lives with her spouse and their dog, Clyde, in Chicago. She has personally experienced the radical benefits of the Resilience Toolkit and is working toward becoming a Certified Toolkit Facilitator to share these transformational skills with others and create a world in which we all thrive.