About me
Steff Reed is an award-winning musician, cultural organizer, scholar,
and liberation theologian whose work uses music and faith as tools to
build cultural resistance, political consciousness, and collective
liberation. Reed is a GRAMMY-nominated music educator whose
collaborations span: serving as the Sunday School Director at Judson
Memorial Church; cultural organizing and song leading with the Kairos
Center for Religion, Rights, and Social Justice; collaborating with the
Songs in the Key of Resistance (SKOR) collective; co-leading and
performing with the Dream Defenders People’s Choir; contributing to the
book We Pray Freedom: Liturgies and Rituals from the Freedom Church of
the Poor, and more. A critically acclaimed independent artist and
Billboard charting songwriter and producer, Reed’s music has been
featured by AFROPUNK, Rolling Stone, and Humans of New York. He
organized and led a book talk with Joy James for her book Confronting
Counterinsurgency at The Word Is Change, and served as an organizer for
Dr. Cornel West’s 2024 presidential campaign. His work spans labor,
eco-justice, immigrant rights, Palestinian liberation, and other
interconnected struggles, using music to build collective identity,
deepen political consciousness, and sustain movement energy. Reed is a
2025 graduate of Union Theological Seminary’s (UTS) Master of Arts in
Social Justice program (MASJ), where he studied with Cornel West and
received the Adelante: Prophetic Leadership Award. In 2026 he completed
his second master’s degree at Union, a Master of Sacred Theology (STM),
focused on social ethics, culminating in his thesis, The People's
Revolutionary Gospel: Maoist Cultural Theory and Revolutionary Art in
Collective Identity Formation and Political Struggle in the Oakland
Chapter of the Black Panther Party. He is a recipient of the Robert E.
Seaver Scholarship for Worship and the Arts and an Innovative Preaching
and Eco-Justice fellow with Karenna Gore's Center for Earth Ethics. His
formation also includes training at the Highlander Research and
Education Center, shaping his approach to popular education, cultural
organizing, and movement-building.
