Johanna is founder and executive director of Our Mothers’ Garden, a multi platform community intent on creating a generational footprint for women of the Diaspora. Newly founded, Our Mothers’ Garden, seeks to empower black women by creating a knowledge base of where we come from, impart the importance of taking up space where we currently are and outlining a future of our collective imaginations using the building blocks of our ancestors. In addition to a two decade long career in science, Johanna co-organized a collective that is a community of practice centering the quality of life and livelihoods of all black women through community organizing, philanthropy and self-care.

Even while being in service to others, she continued to cultivate a supportive and empowering community that has not only increased her social well-being but has nurtured her emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. Being intentional in creating community has shone a light on what is nourishing to her soul and has elucidated where she wants to take both her inherent skills and those gained throughout her self-discovery. She believes that as black women thrive so do their families and the larger community. Johanna, who was born and raised in the Caribbean, formerly educated in the United States of America, and lived in Nairobi, Kenya, considers herself a Daughter of the Diaspora.