MEET THE INNOVATOR OF THE TOGETHERNESS WAYFINDER
Dr. Sheena Michele Mason (CV) is a scholar, author, educator, speaker, and bridge-builder whose work helps people and organizations practice truth-telling, humanization, and togetherness.
She is the creator of the Togetherness Wayfinder and a leading voice in ending racism and the study of how inherited ideas about “race” and inherited practices of racism shape language, institutions, relationships, and public life. Her work asks a bold question: What becomes possible when we name racism clearly, refuse to reduce people to “race,” and build new ways of seeing and being with one another?
Dr. Mason’s scholarship and public work bring together African American, American, and Caribbean literature; Africana philosophy; philosophy of race; antiracism; education; and human rights. Across her books, articles, lectures, workshops, and public conversations, she invites audiences to move beyond inherited scripts and toward more precise, dignified, and transformative ways of engaging identity, difference, belonging, and justice.
She is the author of The Raceless Antiracist: Why Ending Race Is the Future of Antiracism (2024) and Theory of Racelessness: A Case for Philosophies of Antirace(ism) (2022). Her writing develops the “theory of racelessness” and the practice of “raceless antiracism,” offering tools for understanding racism without treating “race” as a biological or permanent truth. Through this work, Dr. Mason challenges individuals and institutions to address racism at its roots while also protecting the fullness and complexity of human beings.
As an Associate Professor of English at SUNY Oneonta, Dr. Mason teaches courses in African American literature, Harlem Renaissance literature, modern Black literature, postcolonial literature, Caribbean literature, and composition. Her teaching centers literature as a space for reflection, imagination, empathy, and social transformation. She helps students think critically about power, language, history, identity, and the stories that shape how people understand themselves and one another.
Beyond the classroom, Dr. Mason works with schools, colleges, organizations, workplaces, and communities seeking more honest and humanizing ways to navigate difference. Through speaking, workshops, consulting, curriculum development, and facilitated dialogue, she helps groups build trust, strengthen belonging, practice clearer language, and move through difficult conversations without losing sight of dignity or shared responsibility.
Her work has been recognized through major honors, including the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, the SUNY Chancellor’s Horizon Award for Faculty Research and Scholarship, the Pillar Award, the Esther Hubbard Whitaker Award, the Alden Scholar Lecture Series Award, the Outstanding Scholar of the Year Award, and early promotion at SUNY Oneonta.
Dr. Mason’s path also reflects a deep commitment to education, community, and practical change. Before her academic career, she taught high school English as a Teach For America corps member, worked with the Freedom Project Network in Arkansas and Mississippi, and served in leadership roles that strengthened learning, mentorship, and community engagement, including as a General Manager, Operations Managers, and Sales Manager of several 24 Hour Fitness locations in four states. These experiences continue to shape her approach to the Togetherness Wayfinder: rigorous enough for institutions, accessible enough for everyday people, and grounded in the belief that transformation happens through practice.
At the center of Dr. Mason’s work is a simple conviction: truth and togetherness belong in the same room. Her life’s work is helping people find the language, courage, and practices to make that possible.
THE TOGETHERNESS WAYFINDER
A practical framework for building connection, clarity, and courage across difference.
The Togetherness Wayfinder helps people find their way back to one another without avoiding the hard truths that shape our lives, institutions, and communities. It is designed for people, organizations, classrooms, workplaces, and communities that want to move through difficult conversations with more honesty, care, and purpose.
In a time when many people feel divided, defensive, exhausted, or unsure how to speak across difference, the Togetherness Wayfinder offers a different path. It helps people slow down, listen more deeply, name what is actually happening, and respond in ways that protect human dignity rather than deepen harm.
The framework offers practical tools for navigating conflict, strengthening trust, repairing harm, improving communication, and building shared responsibility. It creates space for people to think more clearly, speak more honestly, and work together more effectively, especially when conversations involve identity, belonging, injustice, fear, politics, misunderstanding, or disagreement.
Rooted in Dr. Sheena Michele Mason’s work on antiracism, literature, philosophy of race, and humanization, the Togetherness Wayfinder began as a response to the limits of traditional approaches to “race” and racism. Too often, conversations about “race” leave people stuck in inherited categories, offensive or defensive scripts, shame, avoidance, or performance. The Wayfinder offers another route: one that names racism clearly while refusing to reduce human beings.
Over time, this work has grown into a broader framework for bridge-building, belonging, dialogue, leadership, conflict repair, and social transformation. It supports antiracism, but it is not limited to antiracism. It can also help communities address polarization, institutional distrust, cultural difference, exclusion, fractured relationships, classism, and the everyday challenges of trying to build something together.
The answer begins with practice. Togetherness is not passive. It is not pretending harm has not happened. It is not forcing agreement or asking people to be silent for the sake of comfort. It is not about “agreeing to disagree” when objective reality matters. Togetherness is the disciplined work of telling the truth, honoring human complexity, repairing what has been damaged, and creating new ways of being and seeing with one another.
OUR MISSION
The mission of the Togetherness Wayfinder is to help people, organizations, and communities build more honest, humane, and transformative ways of being together.
We bring people together by offering language, tools, information, and practices for truth-telling, healing, repair, and shared responsibility. Our work helps groups move through difficult conversations about identity, difference, belonging, racism, conflict, and harm without losing sight of one another’s humanity.
The Togetherness Wayfinder began with a central insight from Dr. Sheena Michele Mason’s work: antiblack racism often disguises itself as “race.” When we treat “race” as a natural or permanent truth, we can unintentionally keep racism’s logic and impact alive. The Wayfinder helps people see this more clearly, name racism more precisely, and move away from inherited scripts that reduce human beings.
But this work is not only about antiracism. It is also about bridge-building, reconciliation, leadership, belonging, and community repair. We help people ask better questions, use more precise language, build trust across difference, and create shared practices that support dignity, accountability, and meaningful change.
Our mission is to guide individuals and groups toward unity without denial, healing without avoidance, and justice without dehumanization. We believe truth and togetherness belong in the same room, and we help people find their way there.