FOUNDER’S STORY
Hi!
Alexis Green here.
In a world that increasingly attempts to erase the history and contributions of Black women, I feel it’s important to tell my story.
Get know who I am, who my people are, and where I’m coming from. From there, we can build together.
Alexis Green (she/her) was born in raised in Phoenix, Arizona. Alexis comes from a legacy of service, communion, creativity, and Black entrepreneurship. She grew up watching (and eventually helping) with her parents’ catering company, Image Catering. Alexis’ father, Tyrone Green, is an award-winning visual artist from Memphis, Tennessee. He inherited his entrepreneurial spirit from his mother, Thelma Green, who owned her own clothing shop (As Is). Alexis’ mother, Mary Louise Cox, has lived her life in service of others and with the deepest love and dedication to her family.
Creating art, curating experiences, and building community have always been intimately intertwined for Alexis. Her first foray into creating a community-centered experience was when she was 11. She concocted the idea for a benefit concert (Who was it going to benefit? She didn’t know. She was 11.). Her friends came over and she directed a rehearsal in her parents’ driveway, teaching the group the choreography to Ashanti’s “Happy”. While the idea fizzled out after that (because again, she was 11), it was a precursor for how Alexis would continue to approach her work.
Fast forward to college, as Alexis was preparing to wrap up her time at Arizona State University, she decided to use her senior capstone project as opportunity to build community. While most capstone projects were extensive papers about a production a student contributed to, Alexis took on creating and producing a Black theatre festival. She saw the artistic landscape at the time didn’t provide many opportunities for Black performers and there were few spaces to experience Black theatre, so she created one. The ASU Black Theatre Festival took place over the course of a month and featured four productions and almost 50 artists from all over the city. In addition to the productions, the festival also included a community forum and a networking event.
Alexis took the ethos from the Black theatre festival into her graduate school journey at Brown University. While receiving classical training from one of the top MFA programs, she continued to carve out spaces through her artmaking to uplift important topics, create conversations, and celebrate her identity as a Black woman. As conversations around equity and inclusion began to bubble up, Alexis became a trusted leader amongst the students advocating for evolution.
These are the ingredients that led to the first stirrings of (X) Collective.
In 2020, Alexis began working for artEquity, an organization that provides training and resources at the intersection of art and activism, where she served as the Director of Programs until 2025. In her role at artEquity, Alexis provided leadership for artEquity’s programming and managed artEquity’s consulting work with major theatres, universities, museums, and other arts and culture organizations. Through artEquity’s mentorship and because of the many formidable humans that contribute to artEquity’s community, Alexis was able to evolve her vision and officially launch (X) Collective in February 2024.