In this episode of Ronderings, Ron sits down with Wenimo Okoya, educator, public health scholar, and founder of Healing Schools Project, for a conversation about why community itself is medicine and why the adults carrying the most trauma are the ones being asked to deliver wellness frameworks for kids.
Wenimo's path runs from a Newark classroom (where she lost her job in the Christie-era budget cuts that brought the Zuckerberg money in) to a Master's of Public Health and doctorate at Columbia, to the Children's Health Fund, to the JED Foundation, and now to leading Healing Schools Project, a nonprofit born out of pandemic-era healing circles for educators of color.
She introduces herself the way her colleagues at GirlTREK do, by her matrilineal lineage. She is Wenimo, the daughter of Grace, the daughter of Estolita, the daughter of Maude. The thread of women, entrepreneurship, and Caribbean healing wisdom runs through everything she builds.
The conversation lands on a simple frame Wenimo brings into every circle she holds: three questions. How are you arriving? What do you need? What do you have the capacity to give? Ron calls it the simplest leadership tool listeners will hear all year. The back half of the episode unpacks why connection has been overcomplicated and why trust is the metric organizations refuse to measure even though they could.
Tune in to hear why connection doesn't require innovation and why community is the public health intervention we keep walking past.
Chapters:
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02:35 Meet Wenimo Okoya: Newark teacher, public health scholar, founder of Healing Schools Project
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03:32 Daughter of Grace, daughter of Estolita, daughter of Maude: introducing yourself by lineage
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05:40 Teaching in Newark during the Christie cuts and the Zuckerberg money
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08:11 Columbia, Carolyn Belell, and integrating public health and education when no one else was
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13:00 Pandemic healing circles, the JED Foundation, and how Healing Schools Project was born
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21:13 Peppermint in the backyard: Caribbean healing wisdom and what immigrants kept
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23:11 The three questions that beat any icebreaker
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36:55 Trust is the metric organizations refuse to measure
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40:28 Why funders won't pay for what's in the middle
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43:23 Wenimo's Rondering: micro-shifts beat massive change
Links:
Connect with Dr. Wenimo Okoya and the Healing Schools Project team to learn more about their work bringing healing-centered practices and educator well-being into schools across the country.
Episode 93
