"Healing through Comedy" with Marsha Warfield

  Orisade Awodola is a former clinical therapist, author, lecturer, Yoruba Priestess, and researcher. She is the founder of The Institute of African Centered Thought (IACT) in Seattle, Washington. For more than 25 years, Awodola facilitated Ancestral Healing Workshops at the Maudsley Institute of Psychiatry a faculty of London's King College with Chief Kola Abiola and the W.E.B. Dubois Cultural Center in Accra, Ghana. She served as the Director of the Turning Point Program at Hillcrest Children’s Center in the District of Columbia and Federal City Recovery Program where she specialized in Co-occurring Disorders with adults and families, while working with the Washington School of Psychiatry. Currently, she serves on the King County Behavioral Health Advisory Board (BHAB) and is the Racial Inequities subcommittee chair.

 Edward Bynum is a clinical psychologist, master teacher and  specializes in the treatment of health mental problems and helps people to cope with their mental illnesses. His specialization and medical specialty focuses on helping patients understand the causes of their mental health disorders.   He has authored twelve books and co-authored books with           T. Owens Moore on the "Melanin" process. 

In his most recent book, The African Unconscious, 2nd Edition, Bynum explains how “The Indigenous African was erased from the teachings of history and the unfoldment of Human civilization.”  Bynum points out that this study goes back 1.7 million years ago to East Africa where “Homo Erectus” first arose throughout all of Africa to 200,000 years ago and are descendant's of today's “Homo Sapiens Sapiens” and origins of Kemetic science and its influence in mental health.  

 Mindy Thompson-Fullilove is a social psychiatrist who explores the ties between environment and mental health. She and her colleagues at the Cities Research Group and the University of Orange, explored the consequences of social fracture on society and health to  seek ways heal the fractured parts. Prior to joining the New School full-time in 2016, Fullilove taught at Columbia University and was a lecturer at Parsons, she has published numerous articles and six books about the impact of gentrification to include Root Shock, Main Street: How a City's Heart Connects Us All, From Enforcers to Guardians: A Public Health Primer on Ending Police Violence (with Hannah L. F. Cooper), Urban Alchemy: Restoring Joy in America's Sorted-Out Cities, Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do About It, and House of Joshua: Meditations on Family and Place. 

 Dr. Joye Hardiman, Ph.D., is a brilliant conceptualizer, scholar, author, an inspirational speaker, former executive director of Evergreen College Tacoma, and a gifted storyteller. She is a frequent keynote speaker, a sought after conference participant, and an accomplished institute designer.
She is a founding member and an International Executive Board Member of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations. As a Summer Fulbright Scholar she conducted extensive field research in Egypt, India, Ghana, Kenya, the Yucatan, and Trinidad on the African contribution to world civilization using literary and popular culture analysis as her methodology.

  T. Owens Moore, Ph.D., is trained as a Physiological Psychologist. He is a graduate of Lincoln University in PA, and he has an M.S. and a Ph.D. from Howard University. For more than twenty years, he has served as a college professor, a biomedical researcher, and an African-centered scholar/activist. He is a distinguished educator who appreciates interdisciplinary studies. He is an Associate Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Psychology at Clark Atlanta University.  His specialty courses are both in the field of Neuroscience, Melanin,  and African-Centered Psychology. 

   Linda James-Myers, Ph.D., is a Professor at The Ohio State University. She specializes in psychology and culture; moral and spiritual identity development; healing practices and psychotherapeutic processes; and, intersections of race, gender and class. Internationally known for her work in the development of a theory of Optimal Psychology that she has conducted lectures and trainings on in England, South Africa, Ghana and Jamaica. She is the author of numerous articles, book chapters, and five books, including: Understanding an Afrocentric World View: Introduction to a Optimal Psychology; and, most recently, co-editor of Recentering Culture and Knowledge in Conflict Resolution Practice.