Carolyn Finney (born 1959[1]), is a storyteller, author, artist, educator, and currently a scholar-in-residence in the Franklin Environmental Center at Middlebury College.

[2] Finney was raised in Westchester County, New York, where her father and mother, from Floyd, Virginia, tended the private weekend estate of a wealthy Jewish family as caretaker and housekeeper.

She now engages with a wide variety of organizations, institutions and community groups as a public speaker, visiting academic, consultant, advisor and writer.

As social media use increased and many events became virtual during the pandemic, Finney transitioned to Zoom (software) as well as Cisco web and Google Meets to continue her livestreams and answer audience questions in real time.

[12] She argues that African Americans have frequently overcome barriers to the outdoors and why this reality has been ignored in both popular imagination and historical record.