Dan Roller, BA, M.Ed., Psy.D.

Activist and Organizer for Organizing White Men for Collective Liberation and SURJ

Operations Specialist for Argonne National Laboratory

Dan is a trainer, organizer and activist in Chicago active in SURJ (Showing up for Racial Justice) and OWMCL (Organizing White Men for Collective Liberation) both locally and nationally. Dan is also a facilitator with the Opening Doors Diversity Project.

Dan has a Doctor of Psychology, a Master of Education, and Bachelor of Arts in Music. He has numerous certifications in facilitation, leadership development, and coaching.  He has completed several workshops/trainings including: Cultural Specific Models of Intervention (Joy DeGruy), Crossroads Anti-Racism – Understanding and Analyzing Systemic Racism, and recently completed the Anne Braden Anti-Racist Organizer Training Program for white social justice activists.  

I am a weird, even queerish, abolitionist and yet I fit in and even competently participate in patriarchal, racist, classist, capitalist, organizations.  Sometimes I wonder if I am a shape-shifter.  I use my identities as a white, cis-het, heterosexual man to connect with those who share my identities.  You might find me in a suit at a corporate leadership team meeting on Friday and doing mutual aide work on Saturday.  I am complex, even contradictory. And this complexity and contradiction is what makes it possible to understand and work with white men in particular and folx of many different identities and backgrounds. 

The most important and unique thing about Opening Doors is its focus on community.  Each facilitation team is first and foremost, a community.  Each workshop creates community, celebrates community.  In this way we become an embodiment of collective liberation in the world.