Dr. Kandace “DC” Lavender is an educator, teaching artist, and youth advocate. She is also a graduate of Western Michigan University and Michigan State University where she earned her doctorate in Educational Leadership. Currently serving as the Executive Director of Read and Write Kalamazoo, a local non-profit whose mission focuses on “celebrating and amplifying youth voices,” Dr. Lavender has been connecting and building with youth in various capacities for the last 14 years.

Her passions are rooted in using art as a tool to impact youth experiences in the classroom and in the community. As a founder of The Teacher Cypher, an organization that blends Hip Hop Culture, Youth Advocacy and Academic Engagement; she empowers and ignites scholars to reimagine their relationship with education. In addition to her transformational impact on education, Dr. Lavender still finds time to engage in her own writing of various Hip Hop and spoken word pieces sharing her work across local, national, and international platforms as “DC” under the label Truth Tone spreading messages of hope, healing, and love as a verb.