Faced with bullying during his freshman year in high school due to the color of his skin and his sexuality, Jordan Anthony Killebrew was told by his dad at an early age that “only you can find your own happiness.” Jordan not only took his dad’s advice to heart, he took it a step further. Not satisfied with only taking care of his own happiness, Jordan, a very committed leader, has made a concerted effort to instill a sense of happiness in his friends and in the larger community. He’s done this as communications officer at the Santa Barbara Foundation and also as a leader of the Come Together Initiative, an organization that does implicit bias education for all kinds of groups, including the Santa Barbara Police Department. In addition, Jordan founded Project I.V. Love , which helped raise over $50,000 for the Love and Remembrance Garden in Isla Vista.
“Project I.V. Love was a gift from my heart,” the convivial Jordan tells me. When the tragic shootings of May 23, 2014 occurred, Gauchos from all over the U.S. began texting and calling him to find out what was going on. “The day after [the shootings] I had so much energy,” he recalls. “As an artist, I felt we needed to create a memorial to make sure something like this never happens again.” He reached out to the Isla Vista Recreation & Park District and started to get donations for the project, which was completed within a year. It consists of six public benches — one for each of the victims — designed by UCSB art students from Professor Kim Yasuda’s I.V. OpenLab course. Jordan personally designed David Wong’s, which is made out of steel and reclaimed wood.
The Come Together Initiative was born a year ago. Last July, Jordan and a few of his friends organized a candlelight vigil in response to two recent fatal police shootings of black men — Philando Castile outside Minneapolis and Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge. Afterward, Lizzie Rodriguez from Restorative Community Network requested a meeting with Santa Barbara Chief of Police Lori Luhnow to discuss the challenge of implicit bias. As a result, Chief Luhnow asked the group to offer training to sergeants and other top officers of the Santa Barbara PD. “That was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done,” says Jordan of the experience. “Growing up, I’d been told to stay away from police.” The initiative then got a grant from the Fund for Santa Barbara, with Just Communities as their fiscal sponsor. Westmont College Assistant Professor Carmel Saad, an expert on implicit bias, is also part of the initiative, which is currently working on training the Santa Barbara Unified School District.