ABOUT ANYANWU
For more than 28 years, Anyanwu has been building spaces where people can remember who they are.
She is the Founder and CEO of The Human Root, a Black woman-owned grassroots company committed to transformative change in communities and institutions. Her work has impacted more than 20,000 individuals, directly supporting over 1,800 educators, hundreds of families, and more than 15,000 students across more than 20 New York City Department of Education schools, multiple districts, universities, and organizations in New York and California.
Anyanwu is an educator, institutional leader, and social entrepreneur who has built school and learning environments rooted in cultural integrity, disciplined care, restorative practice, and collective responsibility. Her work centers the whole child, honors ancestral knowledge, and strengthens educators so they can sustain themselves while guiding young people toward purpose and freedom.
She has delivered keynote addresses to audiences as large as 3,800, including sharing space with Dr. Maya Angelou. She has been featured in Forbes Women, recognized as Brooklyn Entrepreneur of the Year, and won 1st place in the PowerUp Business Competition. But titles are not what define her.
What defines her is endurance.
Her life has been shaped by Caribbean roots, Marin City activism, surviving gun violence, navigating PTSD, and recovering from breast cancer. Each experience refined her discernment. Each season clarified her purpose.
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TRAINING & DEVELOPMENT
Sacred Vibes Apothecary, NY
(+) Eighteen-month apprenticeship in herbalism and indigenous healing practices.
(+) Gained expertise in community-based health education, wellness workshops, and holistic program design.
Ancient Song Doula Training & Certification, NY
(+) Labor doula and childbirth education certification.
(+) Developed skills in individualized guidance, emotional support, and workshop facilitation for diverse populations.
Collective of Radical Educators Inquiry to Action, NY
(+) Critical Educational Leadership: Sustaining learning environments of social justice and revolutionary education
M.A., Human Rights & Educational Justice, University of San Francisco, 2013
Prof. Certificate, Child and Adolescent Psych, University of California, Berkeley Extension, 2010
B.A., Pan-African Studies, California State University, Northridge, 2005
Human Rights & Education Background
Her professional development spans emergent strategy training, nonprofit leadership, radical education collectives, grant writing, and museum-based cultural humanities work. She co-authored research on student empowerment and racial justice in higher education and has partnered alongside civil rights leaders including Rev. Amos Brown and Malcolm Byrd to address systemic inequities.
As co-founder of the Beyond Black History Month Collective, she helped carve out sacred spaces for spiritual expansion and self-awareness — spaces where vulnerability is not optional but necessary.She does not approach institutions as enemies. She approaches them as living systems capable of repair.
Her work in leadership development integrates:
Adult socio-emotional learning
Psychological safety
Structural accountability
Innovation through diverse perspective
Organizational culture transformation
Retention through dignity and inclusion
Herbalist & Doula Integration
Through Sage & Joy Co. by The Human Root, she offers botanical medicine designed to:
Restore nervous system regulation
Restore reproductive health
Restore spiritual grounding.
Herbalism, for her, is not aesthetic wellness. It is ancestral memory made practical.
As a survivor of breast cancer, gun-violence and a full-spectrum doula, she supports individuals coping with PTSD and first-time Black mothers navigating medical systems where bias and dismissal are real risks.
Her work centers trauma-informed preparation, advocacy, emotional regulation, and spiritual care — ensuring that voice, dignity, and choice remain intact throughout clinical treatment, pregnancy, birth, and postpartum.
Each healing and birth container integrates herbal guidance, emotional support, and structured preparation — all grounded in the liberation-centered philosophy of The Human Root.
Personal Philosophy
Anyanwu’s work is grounded in a simple but rigorous premise:
Power that is not regulated will fragment.
Leadership that is not embodied will burn out.
Healing that is not communal will isolate.
She moves with clarity, anchored by her relationship with God and a disciplined commitment to discernment.
Across boardrooms, classrooms, and birth rooms, her focus remains consistent:
To return people to their center.
To build power that does not harm the body.
To cultivate clarity that sustains vision.
To create spaces where liberation is practiced — not performed.
Everything she builds serves one end:
Deep humanity.
Strategic care.
Freedom that endures.