CAF Activist Spotlight: Dr. Sekile M. Nzinga
As we celebrate 40 years of CAF, we will be honoring activists, past and present, who have shaped our work and strengthened abortion access.
This month, we’re proud to spotlight Dr. Sekile M. Nzinga—a professor, writer, clinician, and former board chair whose deep belief in reproductive justice shaped CAF’s evolution during a pivotal era.
Sekile is a longtime educator and advocate, currently serving as Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A social worker and Women and Gender Studies professor by training, Sekile's work has always centered around gender justice, trauma healing, and community care. Her relationship to this work is deeply personal. “I’m a survivor of child sexual abuse and had my first abortion at age 11,” Sekile shared. “I didn’t know what sex was, but I knew I didn’t want to be a mother. That moment—my ability to say no—was the first time I felt powerful. Reproductive justice and trauma healing are intertwined for me. You can’t talk about one without the other.”
During her six-year tenure on CAF’s board, Sekile’s work proved invaluable as she helped transform CAF’s board, co-created CAF’s early community care model, launched the CAF archive at UIC, and helped shape us toward a reproductive justice framework.
“We were scrappy. We threw bowling fundraisers and my students would help translate our Canva graphics into Spanish. And we never gave up,” Sekile recalls. “We showed up for each other—and for abortion seekers—with what little we had.”
Today, Sekile’s legacy lives on in the policies she helped build, the students she brought into our work, and the cultural shift she championed. “So many of my former students became interns, volunteers, even staff and board members at CAF,” she says. “And my own daughter—who grew up attending Fund-A-Thons—now supports CAF.”
Sekile’s story is a powerful reminder of how our movement is sustained: through testimony, community, and the courage to claim our stories as part of the fight for freedom. We are so honored to celebrate Dr. Sekile Nzinga’s leadership and legacy.
