Orisade Awodola is an ACAH Practitioner, Author, Lecturer, Researcher, and founder of The Institute of Africa-Centered Thought (IACT) in Seattle, Washington. She launched Root Psychology in 2014 as an academic discipline in her doctoral work based on her Ancestral Healing Identity Model, which is in the prep stage for review as an Evidence-Based model. She is an alumnus of Antioch University Seattle, where she received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in psychology.

Her journey began more than 20 years ago. Awodola globally facilitated Ancestral Healing Workshops at London’s King College, its affiliate, the Maudsley Institute of Psychiatry with Chief Kola Abiola in London, England, and the W.E.B. Dubois Cultural Center in Accra, Ghana. She was the Director of the Turning Point Program at Hillcrest Children’s Center, Bald Eagle Center in Anacostia, a southeastern area of the District of Columbia, Federal City Recovery Program also in Washington, D.C., where she specialized in co-occurring Disorders with adults and clients who were referred to the Washington School of Psychiatry in the District of Columbia for therapy, an affiliate of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. In addition to IACT, she served six years on the King County Behavioral Health Advisory Board (BHAB). As the former chair of the BHAB Racial Inequities subcommittee, she continues to be active.