She Been Ready! The Podcast SheBeenReady! The Podcast

Wanda Swan, is the Founder and Director of the The Swan Center for Advocacy & Research, Inc., Founder and CEO of Start By Talking, an anti-oppressive education and multimedia company that helps White folx, leaders, and organizations map their Oppressive Muscle Memory to dismantle White Supremacy and anti-Blackness, and podcast host of Come Get Your White People; where she hosts conversations and engages in the theory-making and analysis that undergirds her work to unpack the taken-for-granted, automatic attitudes and behaviors that maintain racist practices and processes among people in relationships and organization.

Our conversation is riveting and insightful, provoking the type of deep reflection I imagine happens for her clients in 1:1 leadership coaching, their online learning center, and organizational training and assessment.

Follow Wanda on Instagram @startbytalking

We are in for quite a treat. Malesha (Mali) Taylor-Browning joins us to talk about the art of leadership. Malesha is an accomplished vocal artist, TEDx Speaker, strategist and the creator of The E.L.E.V.A*T.E. Framework: 8 Guiding Principles for BIPOC leaders and organizations. This framework has emerged from her lived-experience as a trained opera singer, Black woman, Mother, professor, arts administrator and consultant working across arts disciplines and multiple sectors for the past 25 years.  

Often, Black women’s leadership praxis involves bringing together multiple complex aspects of ourselves and Malesha’s story and articulation of her work is no exception. I hope you all enjoy this conversation and walk away from it as full as I did.  

Learn more about Malesha and her work at musesalon.org/ and follow Muse Salon on Instagram @muse_salon_collaborative

To learn more about what Dr. Wendi is doing and thinking about, follow her at ⁠@drwendiwilliams⁠ on Instagram and Twitter and stay up with the latest on She Been Ready! The Podcast on Facebook ⁠https://www.facebook.com/She_Been_Ready-The-Podcast-105193828770865 ⁠

The final installation.


Yes, we deal with our new client. They are a system. Their name is Whiteness.

As a reminder, I invited @yolie_sealeyruiz and @mindfield_drj to a conversation of remembrance and reflection. We began this conversation Fall 2023 delighted that #ClaudineGay was named president of Harvard University all the while #JoanneAEpps and #OrinthiaMontague were both reported dead within weeks of one another at the start of the term. We were not a week into the 2024 new year when we learned that #BonnieCandia-Bailey completed suicide beneath a deluge of bullying and harassment at Lincoln University by her superior. What is it about the higher education context that makes it so fatal for Black women? While, Black people and Black women in particular have found access to respectable professional lives within a narrow range of roles, education has always been an access point. We’ve been lauded as excellent educators, and now we have must figure out how to survive in academia. Join me for this special 3-part SBR series with my dear colleagues, as we explore what is happening in academia for BIPOC folx, why it is happening (utilizing a framework of intersectional racial and gender trauma), and how we can enact acts of refusal to enable our own recovery. #SheBeenReady!ThePodcast was created for moments like these. Moments where we want to get voice and perspective from Black women thought- leaders about the experiences of us by us. What I know, what we all know is that Black women are not a monolith, nor are the negative experiences we face unique to us. What I also know is we offer a unique perspective that might, just might, lead us to a path of liberation. Somehow, like my grandmother, my mother, my aunties, and my sister “-friends, we survive these spaces and sometimes even thrive. Tune in. LINK IN BIO. #RefusalRecovery #SheBeenReady #RacialTraumaIsrael #DyingInAcademia #BlackWomenAtWork #YouWon’tBreakOurSoul #We’reTellingEverybody

Welcome to Part II our special She Been Ready! The Podcast Conversation of this engaging conversations with Drs. Maryam Jernigan-Noesi and Yolanda Sealy-Ruiz, Break My Soul: BIPOC Folks in Academia.
In this portion of the conversation we dive deeper and try to unearth "the why". We want to understand why we see what we see happening for BIPOC folks in higher ed through the view of three Black women scholars utilizing frameworks of racial literacy and intersectional racial and gender trauma. Powerful!
#RefusalandRecovery #SheBeenReady #RacialTraumaIsReal #DyingInAcademia #BlackWomenAtWork #YouWon’tBreakOurSoul #We’reTellingEverybody

Release the wiggle, release the job, release the stress, forget the rest! Beyoncé had it right. In the midst of so much sadness and despair, she released her album #TheRenaissance, or rather, welcomed us to it. And it is in the backdrop of her song #BreakMySoul, a refusal anthem, that I invited @yolie_sealeyruiz and @mindfield_drj to a conversation of remembrance and reflection. We began this conversation Fall 2023 delighted that #ClaudineGay was named president of Harvard University all the while #JoanneAEpps and #OrinthiaMontague were both reported dead within weeks of one another at the start of the term. We were not a week into the 2024 new year when we learned that #BonnieCandia-Bailey completed suicide beneath a deluge of bullying and harassment at Lincoln University by her superior. What is it about the higher education context that makes it so fatal for Black women? While, Black people and Black women in particular have found access to respectable professional lives within a narrow range of roles, education has always been an access point. We’ve been lauded as excellent educators, and now we have must figure out how to survive in academia. Join me for this special 3-part SBR series with my dear colleagues, as we explore what is happening in academia for BIPOC folx, why it is happening (utilizing a framework of intersectional racial and gender trauma), and how we can enact acts of refusal to enable our own recovery. #SheBeenReady!ThePodcast was created for moments like these. Moments where we want to get voice and perspective from Black women thought- leaders about the experiences of us by us. What I know, what we all know is that Black women are not a monolith, nor are the negative experiences we face unique to us. What I also know is we offer a unique perspective that might, just might, lead us to a path of liberation. Somehow, like my grandmother, my mother, my aunties, and my sister “-friends, we survive these spaces and sometimes even thrive. Tune in. LINK IN BIO. #RefusalRecovery #SheBeenReady #RacialTraumaIsrael #DyingInAcademia #BlackWomenAtWork #YouWon’tBreakOurSoul #We’reTellingEverybody

Dr. Wendi is in conversation with Dr. Jennifer Mullan, a clinical psychologist who is lovingly called the “Rage Doctor”. 

Dr. Mullan is the creator and founder of Decolonizing Therapy and has merged her training as a psychologist with her lived experience to question the ways in which the practice of psychology works and doesn’t work, for whom, and why. 

Her work is powerful and is outlined in her recent book, Decolonizing Therapy: Oppression, Historical Trauma and Politicizing your Practice. Dr. Mullan has cultivated her practice through her work as a professor preparing social workers, therapists, and psychologists in academic programs as well as direct clinical work with clients, specifically young people identifying as BIPOC in complex communities and environments. 

Her latest work amplifies the importance of getting acquainted with rage such that its expression can be liberatory, releasing her clients (individuals and organizations) from the captivity of unexpressed emotion to the lightness available when one listens to what their rage is attempting to tell them about their boundaries and need for care and protection.  This, she says, distinguishes “rage for rage sake” from sacred rage. 

Follow Dr. Jenn Mullan on Instagram @decolonizingtherapy or on her website at https://www.decolonizingtherapy.com

To learn more about what Dr. Wendi is doing and thinking about, follow her at ⁠⁠⁠@drwendiwilliams⁠⁠⁠ on Instagram and Twitter and stay up with the latest on She Been Ready! The Podcast on Facebook ⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/She_Been_Ready-The-Podcast-105193828770865 ⁠⁠⁠

Music Credit: She Been Ready - Arranged, produced, and mixed by Shawn Nealy-Oparah

Instagram: @drwendiwilliamsWebsite: ⁠⁠⁠www.drwendiwilliams.com⁠⁠