She Been Ready! 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...

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 admi...

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...

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...

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 conv...

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...

Dr. Carole Dorham-Kelly, or as she is also known, DC, is the Chief Executive Officer of Rubicon Programs. At Rubicon, they do exceptional work to address the scourge of poverty by equipping participants in their programs to develop the economic mobility to move out of poverty through developing assets, income, wellness, and connections. I asked DC to join me in conversation during our first meetin...

Activist, Community Organizer, Change Maker. Nsé Ufot is nothing short of a transformative presence in our political landscape. Former CEO of the New Georgia Project, an organization founded by Stacey Abrams, Ufot's coalition building and organizing efforts turned the "Peach State Purple". In this incredible interview, I had the pleasure of being in conversation with a thought-leader...

The marriage of heart and intellect is a beautiful thing, made so for its rarity. And yet, in my conversation with Dr. Yolanda (Yolie) Sealy-Ruiz, we get just that as she shares her work bridging the arts and academia to make layers of ourselves available for our own life practice and for our work and relationship with others. One such example is her program, Archaeology of Self , where she encour...

Black women are moving in and through in academia while cultivating movement within academic spaces. I see it up close in my own work and also in the work I witness and support others through as they navigate these complex and often intersectionally toxic contexts. And one woman whom I watch with bated breath and intrigue is Dr. Maryam Jernigan-Noesi. I simply want to see what she will do next! Au...

Hiking is healing! Yes, indeed, it is. Just ask, founder of Hiking is Healing Collective, Tia Williams. In this episode, Dr. Wendi is in conversation with Tia. Tia is an experienced social justice and safe space facilitator who has developed a passion for empowering young people around social justice issues and bringing cultural awareness to those around her. Tia’s identities help shape the work t...

Do Black women need a communications strategy? We might. Whether it be the negative media portrayals of Black women of ALL walks of life, the failure to consider the vast range of Black women's personhood and experience, or the willingness to believe the worst of us before and even after we've had an opportunity to tell our side of the story, we may need help to be seen accurately in the p...

Dr. Wendi is in conversation with Nataki Garrett. Nataki is a change-maker and trailblazer, a nationally recognized director, and most recently, the sixth Artistic Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF). She was the first woman to artistically lead a $44 million theater company and was OSF’s first Black female in this role. Born and raised in Oakland, CA, stemming from a family of educa...

Dr. Wendi is in conversation with Dr. Ife Udoh, Executive Vice President of Policy Advocacy and Science at the Black Women's Health Imperative (BWHI - @ blkwomenshealth on Instagram) . In this episode we bring one of our kitchen table conversations to the podcast. Mothering as leadership, leadership as mothering and how mother's and particularly Black mother's, comport themselves to nu...

The Month of May is quite special and for that reason we are offering two episodes.  May 1, also called Worker’s Day or International Workers Day, commemorates the struggles and gains made by workers and the labour movement across the globe, observed on May 1 in many countries and in September on the first Monday of that month. Later in the month we will launch Episode SBR 207 on the labor of moth...

It is time for a rebirth. Welcome to the full thrust of spring and episode 5 of She Been Ready! The Podcast.  I am quite pleased to have Ife Obi, Founder and Owner of The Fit In Brooklyn join me today.  The Fit In is described as a wellness suite that provides a boutique fitness experience and thoughtfully-developed wellness programming to be a truly inclusive space.   The Root online magazine rig...

Dr. Wendi is joined by Dr. Nadia Lopez and Precious Stroud, two guests of She Been Ready! The Podcast and reviewers of her new book, Black Women at Work: On Refusal and Recovery .  In this LIVE Episode of She Been ReadyI The Podcast the tables are turned and Dr. Wendi is joined by two sister-friends and colleagues who know a thing or two about being Black women at work and whose work centers suppo...

Ashanti Branch is a good brother.  We met twice.  Once, as I was seeking support to begin a podcast.  So you all have him to thank for it. And during that time, I learned that he was an alum of the teacher preparation program of the school I was running.  As an educator, he wanted to understand what was happening with the boys in his school. The boys who were super smart, but distant and did not a...

Dr. Wendi is in conversation with Jamor Gaffney and Nia Martin-Robinson of For the Culture.  Jamor and Nia are culture shifters. Along with their colleague, Sabrina Lakhani, they work with individuals and organizations to make changes in their organizational cultures that are for the culture. The DEI space has gotten quite crowded. In this episode, we delve into this work from the perspective of t...

Dr. Wendi is in conversation with Shri Deihl.  Shri Diehl (she/her) is a certified yoga teacher (E-RYT 500, YACEP) and recipient of the Yoga Alliance Advanced Training Scholarship. Her additional training in trauma-informed wellness complements how she facilitates. Her inspiration comes from living yoga beyond the postures and she is dedicated to being authentically present in all of her endeavors...

Welcome to Season Two of She Been Ready! The Podcast. In this brief season intro, Dr. Wendi shares a bit of what drives the focus of the conversations this season.  While continuing to invite a diverse group of Black women leading in a range of circumstances and contexts, this season Dr. Wendi is in conversation with guests whose work has allowed them to lead with and alongside Black women. &...

In the final episode of season one, Dr. Wendi hands over the reins of the podcast to her trusted friend, Diane Wiltshire. Belovedly known as Fury by her friends and loved ones, of whom Dr. Wendi is one but refuses to call her outside her given name (another story for another day), it is, for this reason, she may be the best person to close out our first season of She Been Ready! The Podcast by int...

The Body is the Portal Kharyshi Wiginton Khayastar@gmail.com Dr. Wendi is in conversation with her long-time friend and co-conspirator, Kharyshi Wiginton.  All their lives, Kharyshi has been a bit of a firecracker and truth-speaker. Audacious really and in ways that were discouraged primarily because of her body. In our conversation, Kharyshi shares her relationship with her body in the conte...

NOTE. Please be aware that the sound quality is a little shaky but accessible.  Enjoy the conversation. Dr. Wendi is in conversation with Dr. Margo Okazawa-Rey, scholar, activist, dancer, DJ, and overall phenomenal human and lover of life. Young at heart, our ongoing joke is that though she is retired and contributed to the Combahee River Collective Statement published the year I was born, sh...

Dr. Wendi is in conversation with Lurie Daniel Favors, Esq. Lurie is a sister-friend from way back and a solid companion in the struggle to bring thoughtful, engaging, and liberatory critique to assess the state of Black America.  We met as her work-centered community-based education in Brooklyn, NY where she co-founded, Breaking the Cycle Consulting Services , and Afro State of Mind a book a...