Violeta Donawa is a healing practitioner and applied sociologist who has committed her life to social justice at the spiritual, community, and systemic levels. She was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, USA to an African-American mother and Panamanian father.
As someone whose identity has shaped her, she has spent much of her life engaged in community organizing and scholarly initiatives that center marginalized people of Color in the United States and Latin America.
Ms. Donawa is a graduate of Wayne State University and Michigan State University, earning her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Sociology. And, she will attend the University of Michigan in the fall 2018 to pursue her MSW in Macro-Level Social Work.
Currently, she serves as a Dream Director for the national organization, The Future Project, where she mentors students on the science of dreaming and goal-setting from a human-possibility framework.
Additionally, she proudly works as part of the Healing by Choice! Women of Color Collective, which offers a range of healing modalities and service-based support to assist the reduction of racial harm in the mind, body, and institutions.
Her involvement in Healing by Choice! also afforded her the opportunity to become a part of the Wayne State University Law School’s Detroit Equity Action Lab (DEAL) where members identify long-standing structural racism and create action plans to promote change. Additionally, DEAL members work to create policy recommendations and improve awareness about racial equity issues in the community.
Lastly, Ms. Donawa’s international work includes English-as-a-Second Language program development in Luanda, Angola and receiving a federal award to study at two major universities in the Amazon and the Northeastern region of Brazil.
Most recently, she was competitively selected as the United States fellow for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Council (OHCHR) 2017 Fellowship Programme for People of African Descent in Geneva, Switzerland.
We are proud of her achievement and we name her Most Influential 100 Class of 2018 Humanitarian and Religious category.
