• Appointed by the Trustees Committee for a term of seven years beginning January 1, 2023

Enola G. Aird is a lawyer, activist mother, and founder and president of Community Healing Network, Inc. Launched in 2006, CHN is the only organization focused exclusively on mobilizing Black people to heal from, and extinguish, the lie of white superiority and black inferiority—the root cause of the dehumanization of Black people in the United States and around the world. In 2021, CHN received a MacArthur Foundation Equitable Recovery Grant for its work in promoting racial justice.

Under Aird’s leadership, CHN has put into place key initiatives to build the global grassroots movement for freedom from the lie, including the annual celebration of Community Healing Days, the Emotional Emancipation Circle self-help support group process, and the Valuing Black Lives Global Emotional Emancipation Summit. CHN is working to make 2021 to 2030 the Decade to Defy the Lie of Black Inferiority and Embrace the Truth of Black Humanity.

Among Aird’s publications are: Toward a Renaissance for the African American Family: Confronting the Lie of Black Inferiority; Breathe, Baby, Breathe: Clearing the Way for the Emotional Emancipation of Black People (with Cheryl Grills and Daryl Rowe); and African Psychology and the Global Movement for Freedom from the Lie of Black Inferiority (with Cheryl Grills and Patrick Frierson).

Aird was born in the Republic of Panama of Caribbean heritage, is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Barnard College, and earned her J.D. from Yale Law School. A former corporate lawyer, she has worked at the Children’s Defense Fund, has served as a Visiting Scholar at the Judge Baker Children’s Center in Boston, Massachusetts, and is a past chair of the Connecticut Commission on Children.