Enola G. Aird is an Afro-Panamanian of Barbadian, Grenadian, and Jamaican heritage. She is a lawyer, an activist mother, and founder and president of Community Healing Network, which is building the global grassroots movement for the emotional emancipation of Black people.
Launched in 2006, CHN focuses exclusively on attacking the root cause of the dehumanization of African people and the underdevelopment of Black communities around the world: the centuries-old lie of White superiority and Black inferiority.
Aird is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Barnard College, and earned her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she chaired the Yale Moot Court of Appeals. A former corporate lawyer, she has worked at the Children’s Defense Fund, and is a past chair of the Connecticut Commission on Children.
Among her publications are: Toward a Renaissance for the African American Family: Confronting the Lie of Black Inferiority, 58 Emory Law Journal, 7-21; (2008-2009); Breathe, Baby, Breathe: Clearing the Way for the Emotional Emancipation of Black People (with Cheryl Grills and Daryl Rowe), Journal of Cultural Studies, 16 (3) (2016); The Case for Emotional Reparations, Parts 1 and 2, CHN Blogposts, April 29, 2019 and May 29, 2019; African Psychology and the Global Movement for Freedom from the Lie of Black Inferiority (with Cheryl Grills and Patrick Frierson), Alternation Journal, 27, 1 (2020), South Africa; and To My Fellow Reparations Advocates: Don’t Forget the Root Cause, IBW21, February 17, 2021.
Aird attributes her vision, passion, and commitment to the movement for emotional emancipation to stories passed down in her family about her maternal great-grandfather, Samuel Alleyne, who was a loyal follower of the Pan Africanist Marcus Mosiah Garvey.
