NYU Metro Center is pleased to introduce Wenimo Okoya as the new director of our Center for Strategic Solutions (CSS). 

Wenimo is a healing-centered educator, program developer, and researcher who has spent her career advocating for and partnering with communities of color. Her career began as a middle school teacher in Newark, NJ and after seeing that both education and health disparities were affecting her students and their families, she decided that good teaching was not enough. This realization pushed her to pursue a Master of Public Health at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health and a Doctor of Education in Health Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Prior to joining the NYU Metro Center team, Wenimo served as the Director of High School Program Implementation at the Jed Foundation. In this role, she supported schools in building their capacity to promote emotional health for students. 

Wenimo also founded the Healing Schools Project--an organization that provides space and tools for educators to heal teachers so they can heal their students--as the 2021 fellow at the Blue Ridge Labs at the Robin Hood Foundation. 

Wenimo has spoken at over a dozen health and education conferences including SXSW Edu and teaches at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health and Teachers College, Columbia University. 

We are excited to have Wenimo join the NYU Metro Team as the New Director of the Center for Strategic Solutions (CSS), especially as the NYU Metro Center leans more fully into its values, passions, and ideas for transforming and bringing solutions to districts, schools, classrooms, and other settings that make a difference in our children’s lives.