Among Others

Anthony “Butterfly” Williams, MFA, PhD, (we/us) is the Executive Director of Iruke Institute International. Dr. Butterfly is a cultural alchemist whose work manifests in performance art, community organizing, and transformative education. He is an expert on the decolonization of culture through the arts. Creativity, compassion and collaboration inspire the transformation of self and society that he calls “the work.”

Dr. Butterfly is a thought leader who has presented papers, lectures, workshops and symposia on creativity, culture and spirituality in academic, professional and community settings, including the U.C. Berkeley School of Social Welfare, the American Psychological Association, and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, among others.

Dr. Butterfly is a community builder who has designed and produced arts-based community events on men’s healing, African-centered psychology, creative leadership, police brutality, affordable housing and gay literature. His community-based collaborations include projects with Community Housing Partnership, Bayview Association for Youth, Center for Political Education, and Urban Healers, among others.

Dr. Butterfly is a multimedia performance artist who has directed or acted in numerous theater productions, including original multimedia works about mass incarceration, Blaxploitation films, and the writer James Baldwin. He sings live in art galleries, where he exhibits music videos that feature his psychedelic art pop band OLOKUN. His performances have also been presented at Herbst Theater, Bayview Opera House, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the San Francisco International Arts Festival, among others.

Dr. Butterfly is a founding member and the newsletter editor of Pacific Felt Factory, a workspace for diverse artists in San Francisco. He has been awarded an artist residency by the San Francisco Public Library as well as art-and-entrepreneurship fellowships by Intersection for the Arts and SQFT, a tech start-up for pop-up events. His work has been funded by the San Francisco Arts Commission, Svane Family Foundation, Zellerbach Family Foundation, Theatre Bay Area, Queer Cultural Center, Center for Cultural Innovation and Groupon Grassroots. His work has also been covered by the San Francisco Chronicle and ABC 7 News, as well as KPOO-FM and the Bay Area Reporter, among others.

A graduate of Yale College, Dr. Butterfly has a M.A. in English from the City University of New York, a M.F.A. in Performance Arts from John F. Kennedy University, and a Ph.D. in Psychology, with specializations in Creativity Studies and Transformative Social Change, from Saybrook University.

The Butterfly Effect II: Leading Toward Liberation @ Saybrook University