https://kristenejeffers.carrd.co 2026-08-06 daily 1.0 https://kristenejeffers.carrd.co/assets/images/gallery01/c8dd6267.jpg Please use this headshot for me for all media and public speaking events. Photographed at the Enoch Pratt Central Library in Baltimore, Maryland in February 2026 by Phillip Smith. https://kristenejeffers.carrd.co/assets/images/gallery01/1328e8c4.jpg Presenting on Black queer feminist disabled urbanism and defying gentrification to Ivy League urban planning students. Click to watch the most up-to-date presentation and how to book me for it! https://kristenejeffers.carrd.co/assets/images/gallery01/c3efce64.jpg My latest book, The Defying Gentrification Playbook, an extension of the presentation above. Click to subscribe to its companion Substack, Defying Gentrification with Kristen Jeffers. Call your favorite bookstore and/or library and ask them to order it for https://kristenejeffers.carrd.co/assets/images/gallery01/6ec0e829.jpg In 2023, I was named one of Planetizen's Most Influential Contemporary Urbanists. Click to read the entire list of honorees! https://kristenejeffers.carrd.co/assets/images/gallery01/c9cecaa3.jpg Crochet is probably my most expensive hobby, but it brings me so much joy. I took it up in the midst of all of my activism and now it's a core part of my interdisciplinary practice.Click for details about my first designer fashion show on September 5th. https://kristenejeffers.carrd.co/assets/images/gallery01/b6fcb661.jpg I was honored to be asked by the Sierra Club for this reflection on the future, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and increased awareness on the need for Black liberation in 2020. I still stand by all of these words as a solution, even if a lot of https://kristenejeffers.carrd.co/assets/images/gallery01/afac0a73.jpg NC State Technician Feature on my very first radio show/podcast on WKNC. It was called Laid Back, started by an old friend, and we played smooth jazz. Fall 2007. Photo by Andy Mussleman for Technician. https://kristenejeffers.carrd.co/assets/images/gallery01/50d013b8.jpg News and Record Sunday Front Page Feature on my life at the time in Downtown Greensboro and how it felt to live in the body I'm in and be able to live downtown in 2013. Spring 2013. https://kristenejeffers.carrd.co/assets/images/gallery01/ae24bce9.jpg Growing up in Greensboro instilled in me a goal to be active in civil rights and my own liberation. In 2015, just before I moved away, I was honored as an adult for the work I'd done through many of the avenues you see here on this site. https://kristenejeffers.carrd.co/assets/images/gallery01/1f7e6e9e.jpg I've been featured on 3 different NPR midday shows in three different markets as a commentator over the years. But my absolute favorite was piping in from the NPR "mothership" in DC (where they record Tiny Desk) to WUNC's classic midday show, The State of https://kristenejeffers.carrd.co/assets/images/gallery01/d9ac562f.jpg Talking about how North Carolina has been gentrified is one of my least favorite subjects, but it's one of my most valuable and needed. The seeds of me moving from just "The Black Urbanist" to Defying Gentrification with Kristen Jeffers started right here, https://kristenejeffers.carrd.co/assets/images/gallery01/c9cc6fe5.jpg My only 40 under 40 to date (and probably ever since I'm 40 now) selected by childhood friend and preservationist leader Sarah Marsom to this amazing group of historic and cultural preservation colleagues pushing us to learn from history, but not repeat al https://kristenejeffers.carrd.co/assets/images/gallery01/ed63f48b.jpg It may have been online-only, but I'll take House Beautiful and my reflection in it on Alexandria, Virginia, my absolute favorite of the DC cluster municipalities, as my largest national byline to date. Of course they just nuked it, but I have a PDF of it https://kristenejeffers.carrd.co/assets/images/gallery01/2dfce895.jpg My wife and I support all of our pursuits. She was named a Capitol Pride Hero for creating her advocacy group EndoQueer (now GynoQueer, soon to return!)