Tamera Hutcherson
Tamera is a queer, biracial woman from southern California native and a Fort Worth transplant. Upon post-graduation from Texas Christian University in 2018 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and minor in Women and Gender Studies, she relocated to Los Angeles to work with SEIU as a union organizer for the Child Care Providers United. She mobilized, organized, and lobbied throughout California on behalf of subsidized child care providers who are predominantly women of color to unionize for better working conditions, wages, and benefits.
She graduated from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs with a Masters in Public Policy in June 2021. During her time as a graduate student, she served as a fellow for United Way of Greater Los Angeles working with their education department to conduct research on the local educational landscape within Los Angeles Unified, and to assist with the planning and execution of initiatives and events through local education partnerships. She gathered and analyzed data at the state and local level to track the percentage of students without broadband access to help distribute laptops and Wi-Fi hotspots to households in need and to call-to-action for elected officials to invest in increased broadband access during the COVID-19 pandemic. She is also a former educator who worked as a Graduate Teaching Assistant teaching courses within the UCLA departments of Labor Studies and Sociology.
After experiencing a mental health crisis in 2016, her own encounter with law enforcement influenced her passion to advocate for individuals with mental health issues who are criminalized and funneled into the jail system due to lack of mental health resources. Her familial impact by the carceral system after witnessing both her mother and sister serve time in jail led her to better understand the conditions and treatment of women in jails. She joined Texas Jail Project as the Community Organizer for Tarrant County to help incarcerated individuals and their families navigate the jail system, combat the cash bail system, and advocate for expansion of mental health and substance use prevention resources over incarceration.
She is currently part of the Tarrant County Leadership ISD 2022 Fellow Cohort and serves on the board for the TCU Black Alumni Alliance as the Scholarship Chair. She is also a volunteer for Funkytown Fridge combating food apartheid specifically in her zip code 76104 which has the lowest life expectancy in the state of Texas, the Atatiana Project exposing students of color to STEM which was started by Atatiana Jefferson’s sisters in honor of her legacy, and United Fort Worth, a grassroots organization “that challenges discriminatory policy and systems of oppression through collective action.”
Tamera enjoys writing and art. Her articles and poetry have been published in Fort Worth Weekly and Medium.