Jacqui Johnson, LPC, NCC, CCMHC, PMH-C is the Founder and Clinical Director of Sankofa Healing Studio in Philadelphia. She is a Social-Justice Art Therapist who specializes in creating holistic trauma-specific healing spaces within marginalized communities; she is also trained as a Play Therapist. Jacqui uses a unique blend of approaches inlcuding art, play, storytelling, hip-hop therapy, parts-work, and mind-body awareness with EMDR, Brainspotting, and energy-based practices of Sound Healing and Reiki. She provides consultation to trained EMDR and Brainspotting clinicians seeking board certification, and is a training facilitator for EMDR in Color, a national training initiative - that has trained close to 400 therapist - to make EMDR more accessible to Therapist of Color. Jacqui teaches in the Community and Trauma Counseling program at Thomas Jefferson University and lectures widely. Her clinical work and research center around working with people in the Black community who have suffered various types of traumas as well as racism, systemic oppression, and mass incarceration.

Veronica Agard (Ifáṣadùn Fásanmí) (she/her) is a writer, abọ̀rìṣà, community educator, and connector at the intersections of Black identity, wellness, representation, and culture. She curated the Who Heals the Healer series and the conference of the same name and facilitates the Ancestors in Training educational project. Her words have homes at For Harriet, Black Girl Magik, Life as Ceremony, Black + Well, Redefining Our, and Heritage Journal (among others). Through Ancestors in Training, she is a recipient of a Spring 2022 Reclamation Ventures Grant award for Healing Practices for Grief. Ṣadùn also serves as a member of the Speakers Series with End Rape on Campus, as well as member of the Board at IDHA NYC. With every opportunity, she names the power of storytelling and being believed in. Described as living in the future - Veronica is guided by the past and carries out her dreams in the present. www.veronicaagard.com/links

Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu (they/she) is a white, queer and non-binary, Disabled, neurodivergent care worker and educator of Ashkenazi Jewish and Boricua ascent. They are rooted in a historical and political lineage of Disability Justice and Mad Liberation; and show up for their communities as the Executive Director of Project LETS, an organizer, parent, doula, peer supporter, writer, and conflict intervention facilitator. Their work specializes in building non-carceral, peer-led mental health care systems that exist outside of the state, reimagining everything we’ve come to learn about mental distress, and supporting care workers in building access-centered, trauma responsive practices that support whole bodymind healing.

Priya Florence Dadlani (all pronouns) is an Indo-Caribbean, queer cultural worker from Silver Spring, MD. Dedicated to liberation from the oppressive boxes white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy work overtime to keep us in, Priya's work is rooted in constantly standing on the edge of transformation, believing in the possibility of a new world. Their toolbox consists of political education, zine making, strategy, and storytelling. Priya currently resides in Brooklyn, NY where she organizes with SPICY, a collective she founded led by and for queer people of color working at the intersection of art, justice, and cultural archival. In addition, they are the Communications Associate at Third Wave Fund, a member of the Jahajee Sisters grassroots action team, and a member of Media Sutra to support the dreams of Black and brown creative entrepreneurs. You can follow her on social media at @priya.florence.

Elmina Bell (she/they) hails from Indigenous African parents from the Indigenous Bantu Sawa/Subu peoples of coastal, southwest Cameroon in Central Africa, and the Ewe peoples of Togo West Africa and was born and raised in the United States. Elmina is multiply neurodivergent/neuroexpansive person who centers Indigenous holistic psychologies and cosmologies for improved mental health, community building, and for the dismantling of oppressive colonial capitalistic societal systems that are at the root of health and housing disparities. Their work as a trained trauma-informed peer support facilitator, crisis counselor, tropical and sidereal astrologer, sound healer, and medium, is guided by Mulema Alchemy. Mulema means heart in the Indigenous Sawa languages of her parents and she believes in the transformative, alchemical power of the heart.

Dr. Mariel Buqué is a Columbia University-trained Psychologist, intergenerational trauma expert, and the author of the upcoming book Break the Cycle: a healing guide for generational trauma. She provides courses for healing trauma and building healthy relationships and provides corporate wellness consultations to Fortune 100 companies including Google, Twitter, Capital One, and Facebook. She shares mental health tips with an online community of over 700K community members and has been featured on major media outlets including The Today Show, CNN, The Real, and ABC News. You may find her work at www.drmarielbuque.com and on social media at @dr.marielbuque.

Marika Heinrichs is the granddaughter of German Mennonite, British, and Irish settlers to so-called Canada. She is a queer, femme, somatics practitioner and teacher whose work focuses on the recovery of ancestral wisdom through body-based ways of knowing, and on challenging the appropriation and erasure of Indigenous knowledge in the field of somatics. Marika resides on Attawandaron, Haudenosaunee and Anishinabe territory (so-called Guelph, Ontario). She is grateful for the nourishment and support of her peers, mentors, and more-than-human kin.

Sun Kim (they/she) is IDHA's Membership & Community Engagement Associate. Sun is a Queer educator and emerging filmmaker curious about how understanding intergenerational trauma can cultivate collective healing. They bring a background of organizing trauma-informed survivor-centered spaces and resources within the Asian American community, and a lens of approaching anti-violence work through transformative justice practices. They also work as a film teacher, and believe in the power of nurturing the creative voices of youth in building our abundant and interconnected futures. They are thankful to grow their practices of somatic healing, altar/ritual building, and multimedia storytelling with the IDHA community.

Noah Gokul (they/them) is IDHA's Program Coordinator. Noah is a Queer multidisciplinary artist and educator here to create liberated worlds through art, storytelling, and sound. They grew up in Oakland, CA/unceded Ohlone land, and identify as a trauma survivor with sensitivities to the world around them. They use music and art for meaning-making and the healing of others, integrating these passions into their work as a peer for young adults in a first-episode psychosis program. They have facilitated in a wide variety of settings, at the intersections of anti-oppression, trauma, incarceration, Caribbean ancestry, music, and mental health. Through their incantations they create spaces of radical imagination and possibility.

Affectionately nicknamed “the Rage Doctor” by peers and clients, Dr. Jennifer Mullan (she/her) is trained as a Clinical Psychologist, Ancestral Rage & Grief Guide, and a published author. As CEO and founder of Decolonizing Therapy, LLC, Dr. Mullan seeks to shift the paradigm and narrative of mental health, helping to reconnect practitioners and clients to the roots of our wounding and depth of our healing within a sociopolitical lens. Dr. Mullan helps people return Home to themselves, their lineages, their Peoples indigenous ways of healing, and lights the fire towards collective action. She believes it’s essential for all professionals to question the relate-ability of their practices to “everyday people”and ultimately, to reassess “whom they are serving?” To further advance this “root work”- Dr. Mullan founded Decolonizing Therapy, LLC in 2018, and since, has built a significant social media platform, including 162,000 Instagram supporters, and growing often shouting: “Everything is Political!” She has been featured in Allure, GQ, The Today Show, The Calgary Journal, and was selected by ESSENCE Magazine to receive the 2020 Essential Hero Award, in the category of Mental Health.

Steven T. Licardi is an Autistic social worker, spoken word poet, writer, and performance activist working at the intersections of art and social policy. He travels internationally using the power of performance to create empathic dialogue around, to confront the realities of, and to assist communities in subverting historic narratives around mental health and madness. He further explores such themes in his science fiction writing, which can be read in his monthly newsletter Cross My Heart And Hope To Write. His ever-evolving performance series #CoupDeMot confronts how mental illnesses manifest out of oppressive social systems and most recently appeared in Oslo, Norway in 2022. www.thesvenbo.com/books IG/Twitter/Venmo: @thesvenbo

Dr. Evan Auguste (he/him) is an assistant professor of psychology at UMass Boston who focuses on addressing the mental health consequences of structural anti-Blackness through the lens of Black liberation psychology. Currently, his research involves community participatory, qualitative, and quantitative methods to examine the effects of disparate exposure to justice-contact and community violence for Black adolescents and state-induced migratory traumas for Haitian people. He also focuses on developing and piloting anti-carceral and community based health interventions, such as the Association of Black Psychologists’ Sawubona Healing Circles to promote healing from an African-centered framework. His advocacy involves connecting with local, national, and international coalitions to promote policy and community change.

Jay Stevens (LMHC, Recovery Coach, Acupuncture Detoxification Specialist) brings a unique combination of business and social services experience to IDHA. After years in finance and struggles with substance use (and a subsequent incarceration) opened his eyes to the systemic harms caused by structural racism, classism, patriarchy, and white supremacy, Jay decided to dedicate his life to help transform unjust systems while supporting those harmed by them. Jay now directs a New York City Shelter-ACT Team with a Harm Reduction and Decarceration lens, supporting those who are unhoused and/or living with mental health diagnoses. He believes in the foundational power of human connection, and in IDHA’s mission to create a new transformative mental health system - led by people with lived experience - that is community-based and free from surveillance and coercion.

Dr. Jennifer Wang-Hall is a licensed psychologist in California who has treated EDs at all levels of care since 2011. Working in various treatment centers and teams with differing approaches, Dr. Wang-Hall has trained in a multitude of approaches and has witnessed the utility and futility of various modalities. These experiences have led her to an eclectic and client centered lens that facilitates empowerment and agency in ED recovery. Core to Dr. Wang-Hall’s approach is attunement to systems of oppression that manifest in both the development and treatment of eating disorders. She integrates attention to ableism, white supremacy, misogyny, cis heterosexism, capitalism, and settler colonialism in her care of individuals from all backgrounds struggling with eating disorders. Currently in private practice, Dr. Wang-Hall offers individual and group therapies, live meal support, trainings and consultation for providers, and online social media education. She is passionate about accessible, compassionate care for all people struggling with food and body concerns.

Denise Ranaghan shares a powerful personal story of recovery that has driven her 20-year record of service in the mental health field. She has held multiple positions including Residential Manager, Peer Specialist, Director of Wellness Services, Director of Assertive Community Treatment, and Director of Peer Services. In all of her positions she strove to include the peer perspective and vehemently called out oppressive practices, and eventually came to terms with how she was contributing to them. She was one of the first in several agencies who publicly identified as a Peer while in professional roles. She introduced and supported alternative peer run self help groups that challenged the “clinician knows best” belief. Denise has presented on Peer Support, Trauma-Informed Care, Voice hearing, Cultural Diversity, Suicide and The Human Canine connection. She is the author of multiple essays on recovery as well as the book Institutional Eyes which profiles her experience in the military where she was first psychiatrically hospitalized. Presently she has a private practice in Woodstock, NY, she serves on the Ulster County Community Services Board, the Mental health subcommittee and is a member a local Social Justice Committee. She says she has found community with a purpose at IDHA!