Amatullah Sip

Committed and innovative community leader and educator with a robust background in executive leadership, program and financial management, operations, and development. Demonstrated success in cultivating enduring relationships with diverse stakeholders, including youth, parents, clinicians, students, and community members. Recognized team builder, adept at leading anti-oppressive and inclusive multi-disciplinary teams through coaching and empowerment. Skilled in proposing, facilitating, and advancing initiatives centered on diversity, equity, and inclusion within educational agencies and public communities. Possesses exceptional project and time management, organizational, critical thinking, and communication skills.

• Youth Justice & Power Union, Focus: Non- Carceral Systems and Approaches, Panelist 2024
• Mental Health Crises Response (MHCR) Campaign Co-Coordinator 2023-Present
• Psychology Department, University of Massachusetts Boston, Devin G. Atallah, PhD, Assistant Professor of PSY415: Psychological Trauma: Individual, PSYCLN 879: Advanced Community Psychology Projects, Community Practitioner Guest Lecturer, 2021-2023
• Ella Baker Young Adult Fellowship, Co-Director, 2021-Present
• Organizing Black (Baltimore, MD), Board Member, 2021- Present
• Community Labor United (CLU), Member, 2023
• University of Massachusetts Boston, Member, 2018-2023, Dara Collective, Clinical Psychology Research Team

• Racial and Gender Justice
• Antiracism Education and Training
• Black Resistance and Liberation
• Youth and Community Organizing
• Mental Health and Crises Response Access
• Social Theory/Movements
• Popular and Political Education
• Community and Organizational Infrastructure and Sustainability
• Mass Incarceration and Decarceration
• Womanism
• Liberation Theology
• Epistemology
• Spirituality

• Boston Non-Police Community Based Mental Health Crisis Response (MHCR), Steering Committee Member and Report Co-Author, 2022, Present, In 2021, after successful organizing by the Defund BosCops Coalition, Boston took a huge step in the right direction when they funded a community-led design process to develop a community-based mental health crisis response model that does not involve the police. The City School and Boston Liberation Health facilitated the design process, working alongside fourteen community members, with both professional and lived experience with mental health crises. The design process was rooted in core values of racial, economic, gender, queer, and disability justice and was informed by other groups engaging in crisis response work across the country. The design process began in March 2022 and concluded with the submission of a final report to Mayor Michelle Wu in November 2022. Currently community members, staff, youth and more are organizing to secure 2.6 million in funds diverted from the Boston police department budget to be allocated to MHCR.
• YPAR Activism and Organizing as a Mental Health Intervention for BIPOC Youth: Building the Case for Practice Informed Evidence, Community Partner, 2021, Principal investigators Dr. Dawn Belkin Martinez and Dr. Linda Sprague Martinez partnered with colleagues, Amatullah Mervin (Executive Director) and Tara Venkatraman (LCSW, Director of Programs) at The City School Inc. to engage in Youth-Led Participatory Action Research (YPAR) to (1) create the conditions associated with youth empowerment and collective action to help create best practices for mental health and collective care for young BIPOC people. They hypothesized that organizing and political education can be effective mental health interventions and that YPAR can advance antiracist policy and practice. To evaluate the impacts of YPAR, they used exploratory single-case study design, utilizing pre/post assessments and exit interviews with youth, weekly debriefs with program staff, program observations, key informant interviews with community stakeholders and municipal leaders, document review, and media analysis.