Who are you? Pronouns (She/Her)

A locs’d Caribbean goddess and African ancestor dwelling in the body of a fly black Londoner, doing bits.

An essential thing people need to know about you

EVERYONE (including me) pisses me off due to their unwavering commitment to Capitalism

What gets you up everyday?

The need for the world to stop killing my people, and others. And to stop taking us for eediat. 

Qualifications and Experience

• Degree in Social Anthropology and African Studies with Swahili
• PGCE Mathematics Education
• Masters in Educational Leadership
• PhD in Bun Academia Until it is Truly Decolonised
• Trained life/executive coach, youth worker, secondary school teacher, Youth Mental Health First Aider, Basketball coach, Scouts Leader, Bad gyal

Through what lens do you operate?

A Black Queer Liberation Abolitionist Unicorn lens

Favourite activist?

Thomas Sankara - Because he’s fine. And he boldly imagined an Africa and a world that afforded everyone dignity. 

Vision for Utopia?

A world where people just get to be. (And Thomas Sankara is my bae).

Who I am

There’s a ✊🏾“Black Power” in my head and heart at all times. Just to clarify, that means I love everything that is Blackness and Black people. Proudly Afro-Caribbean but I celebrate all Blacks, everywhere.

London is the best country in this country, 🤷🏿 I didn’t make the rules, I just am from here and speak objective facts *stares at Birmingham*

My relationships (Partner, family and friends) are my bedrock. Love ‘em no end.

5 key things about me

1. My bed is the single greatest place on the planet. I would say fight me, but I’m in bed, so fight somebody else about your wrongness.
2. After sleep, eating is my greatest joy. There isn’t enough time to detail all the foods I love and the ones I want to try.
3. I love Hip-Hop. Hip-Hop. It is amazing, complex, deeply problematic 😬 and an ode to every other genre. There is a song and lyric for every emotion and experience.
4. I love conversations… SOME people say I talk too much.
5. In the right context, almost anything can be funny. Laughter is one of my daily vitamins... That and food.

I want everyone to be able to live life and experience it as they want to without the influence of Colonialism, White Supremacy or Capitalism. If you’re not about that, feel free to avoid me till you are. We're cool though. 😉
 

My name is Katherine O’Garro. Names that make up who I am, the good and the bad; my power and my trauma. My name links me to my ancestors, but also to my oppressors. Each name represents me and how I got to where I am today. They explain how I came to be a part of the Rivers Family. They represent a lifelong journey that is far from over. I give my names because I give all of me.

East London born and raised. I still reside in East, and I still ride for East! I arrived here by way of Montserrat and Trinidad, with my ancestors and genesis being Mama Africa.

If my childhood was to have a soundtrack, it would be the sounds of sweet soca music punctuated by the crisp sound of ball to bat. It would look like the black body contorting in joy in a way that it has done so for millennia. It would smell like sugar being burnt, the main ingredient to a succulent Sunday gravy. It would taste like dhalpuri roti with split pea powder spilling out of it.

I am love and light, but I am also rage and fight.

I am shy (a legacy of a system which has consistently told me that I am not enough). I am angry. I am bitter. I am tired. I am done.

But I am also hope.

Every day I work on healing myself, whilst keeping that fire inside of me

I am a sarcastic troublemaker, always 

I am community. I am ‘we’.

Collective and individual liberation is the dream.

My role in Rivers Coaching is that of the ‘Designer’; not in the traditional sense, but rather in a much more fluid, revolutionary and reimagined one. It is my aim to offer support in threading together the lived experiences, events and injustices of the oppressed members of society in a way that is:

• accessible
• tangible
• with love
• beauty
• soul and humanity
• with reverence