Dr Julia “Chinyere” Oparah is an experienced leader with 30+ years of administrative experience in higher education and the nonprofit sector, including the roles of executive director, dean, provost and vice president for academic affairs. Chinyere’s coaching practice helps leaders identify and overcome internal and external barriers so that they can unleash their innate wisdom and power, and lead from a place of authenticity, purpose and joy. Chinyere is a Certified Executive Coach, Career Coach and member of the International Coaching Federation and Center for Executive Coaching. She is also a certified Trauma Informed Coach, and holds a certification in Hogan Leadership Assessments. Her trauma-informed approach offers tools to manage the impact of historic and contemporary traumas that may be activated by workplace microaggressions and toxic work cultures.
After witnessing first-hand the intense pressures on equity-oriented leaders, Chinyere founded the Center for Liberated Leadership to connect and resource leaders as they navigate challenging politics, complex organizational cultures and relentless workloads. A National Equity Project fellow, Chinyere is trained in liberatory design principles and is committed to cultivating equitable and engaged workplace and campus communities. Chinyere brings extensive experience of leading diversity hiring and retention initiatives, managing change in volatile contexts, building high-performance, high-trust teams, creating engaged and equitable workplace and campus climates, developing actionable strategic plans, and leading during organizational restructuring, mergers and acquisitions. She has worked in both public and private institutions of higher education in the U.S and Canada.
Chinyere began her career in the nonprofit sector, where she served as director of a national development agency. Her internationally recognized scholarship reflects a lifelong commitment to antiracism and social justice. She has held tenured faculty positions for 25 years. She holds a doctorate in Sociology with a focus on minority women’s civic engagement (Warwick), a master’s degree in Race and Ethnic Studies (Warwick) and a certificate in Management and Leadership in Education (Harvard). On a personal note, Chinyere practices yoga and mindfulness, loves to hike the Sonoma ocean bluff trail and lives her life to a gospel music soundtrack.
