Lee Bynum, Senior Program Associate at the Mellon Foundation, is a scholar of race and performance. He has devoted his career to strategizing around social justice initiatives in the performing arts, higher education, food security, and public sectors, having held leadership positions at Columbia University, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Dream Unfinished Orchestra, Black Feminist Project, Harmony Theatre Company, Diaspora Community Services, and St. Francis University in Hong Kong.
In addition to his regular contributions to the New York Amsterdam News, Lee’s academic work on Black culture, women’s history, classical music, and comic books has been published by the university presses of Oxford, Harvard, Columbia, NYU, and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Lee holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Columbia University.