The Embraced Body Team

MEET THE LEADERSHIP TEAM

India Harville, founder of Embraced Body posing with an eager smile. She is a black woman with long braided hair. She is wearing a black shirt and purple cardigan.

India Harville

Founder, Embraced Body & Disability Justice Activist
she/her/hers

JJ Omelagash, Program Director at Embraced Body is smiling at the camera. They are wearing a lavender button up with a plaid vest.

JJ Omelagah

Program Director, Access Doula, and Healing Artist
they/them/theirs

MEET THE SUPPORT TEAM

Cam Wooley, personal care attendant at Embraced Body is a young white woman with pink highlights in her hair. She is wearing a black sweater with a gray cardigan..

Cam Wooley

Personal Care Attendant to the Founder
they/them/theirs

Cam Wooley is the Personal Care Attendant for India Harville, Founder of Embraced Body. Cam has been a personal care attendant for over five years and has worked beside India daily for the last two years. They are CPR and First Aid certified and have experience working with a wide variety of disabilities. They also have a background as an administrative assistant, making them a perfect attendant for India. Cam supports India with physical tasks, including cleaning, office maintenance, carrying supplies and other tasks by request. Cam also supports India with daily work tasks when she is having symptoms related to her medical conditions, ensuring continuity in communication and client services. Cam has significant training to support India during seizures, intermittent paralysis, and nonverbal moments related to her neurological condition, ensuring India’s safety. Cam also travels with India and supports her during in-person events and trainings.

Dana Garza, admin assistant at Embraced Body is a Mestiza and white nonbinary person. They have very short dark brown hair, and orange toned glasses. They wear bright purple lipstick and a leopard print shirt.

Dana Garza

Administrative Assistant
they/them/theirs

Dana Garza is a queer, Disabled, Mestiza and white nonbinary person, healer, writer, and activist of mixed Tejanx and Scottish ascent. They come from a grassroots and working class background and are informed by their lived experiences at the intersections of class, race, ability, gender and sexuality. They currently serve as administrative assistant at Embraced Body where they assist with access support, community outreach, networking, fundraising,  and communications.  They are also a former member of the collective group Disability Justice Culture Club. Outside of work, Dana loves animals, good Mexican food,  writing, beautiful sunsets, and anything involved with vintage Chevy’s.

Erika Hambrick, personal care assistant at Embraced Body is a young Black woman. She is smiling at the camera and has her natural hair in a bun and wears and ribbed gray henly .

Erika Hambrick

Personal Care Attendant to the Founder
she/her/hers

Erika brings over seven years of experience into her work as a Personal Care Attendant. She combines her skills as a personal assistant, writer, and social media specialist to support India/Embraced Body. Erika is skilled with Adobe Creative Suite, Canva, Google Suite, and Microsoft Office. She is also trained in photography. Erika is currently pursuing a bachelor's degree in English with a minor in marketing. In her free time, she enjoys creative writing and screenwriting.

Ifasina Clear, a dance artist at Embraced Body is confidently looking at the camera with a poised facial expression. They are Black with short dreads and styling a brown fedora along with a cheetah print sweater.

Ifasina Clear

Black Spirit Dance Collective Artist
they/them/theirs

My given name is TaMeicka Lashelle Clear. I have come to love this name as it says a lot about the time frame that I grew up in (early 80s) and displays my southern, Black roots in a way that really shows the color and creativity of Black people during that time. I believe that Black American English is real, valid, and a whole language. TaMeicka Lashelle is a proud badge of Black American English that I love to wear!

 I received the name Ifasina during ritual initiation into the African Traditional Practice of Ifa, in 2014. Ifasina translates loosely to "Ifa brings forth blessings with power and great force". It is a powerful name and a vibration I strive to walk in. Most people in my life know me as Ifasina at this point. My roots and history both from the name I was given at birth and given at rebirth are a large part of who I am.

I am a big bodied(fat), Black, genderqueer person (they/them pronouns) from Dallas,Texas living and working across The South and California. I've been a dancer since I was 8 years old and I've been teaching dance since I was 15. Dancing and teaching are core to who I am. Dance is my home based creative gift. I make offerings to spirit, take care of my body and soul, and channel a large portion of my creative energy through dance. Teaching is my second gift and it tends to be the kind of work I enjoy most. Both dance and teaching are what I am purposed to do with my life. Life has allowed me so many ways to use these two parts of myself in the world to impact and support others, to heal myself, and my contribute to my community.

In my work over the years, those that I have served, taught, or led have been just as much my teacher as I have been theirs. 

I've been working since I was 14 and come from a working poor/working class family. We have multiple generations of being impacted by poverty, welfare, mass incarceration, foster care systems, and gender based violence. I am a product of these experiences and the teen parents that believed "it takes a village to raise a child". This strong foundation and ability to navigate complex life circumstances informs the way I approach my work as a trainer, consultant, and coach. My art, my leadership, and my work in the world are largely shaped by who I am and who I come from.

I am currently in my 5th year of 7+ year training as a priest in the Ifa tradition. I am a Master Level Usui Reiki Healing Practitioner with 10 years of practice and training. In my commitment to stay current with my own healing, I regularly attend talk and process therapy, ritual healing with my elders, and engage in other kinds of trauma recovery. I lead a life that centers radical honesty about who I am and where I am on the journey of recovery, community contribution, and leadership development. I believe in transparency and this shows in how I collaborate, forge teams, and do my work in the world. I have a gift for active listening and translation, including authentic communication and synthesis, and getting to the heart of the matter. All this makes me an excellent resource for collaborators trying to pull together teams. I am a grounding force as a group facilitator and a compassionate and accessible ritual and culture keeper. It is my absolute joy and passion to partner and collaborate with complex teams on the meaningful initiatives and projects they are leading.

Kayla Hamilton, Co-director and collaborator at Embraced Body is a Black woman with short black hair. She is wearing glasses as she smiles eagerly. She is wearing a red shirt.

Kayla Hamilton

How We Move Co-Facilitator and Ongoing Collaborator
she/they

Kayla Hamilton is a Texas born, Bronx based performance maker, dancer, educator, consultant and the artistic director of Circle O—a cultural organization uplifting Black Disabled and other multiply marginalized  creatives. 

Kayla is 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, A 2023-2024 Pina Bausch Foundation Fellow, a 2024 United States Artist Disability Futures Fellow, a 2024 NEFA National Dance Project Production Grant recipient and a 2023-2024 Bronx Cultural Visions Fund recipient.

Her past performances have been presented at the Whitney Museum, Gibney, Performance Space NY, New York Live Arts and Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance.

As a dancer, Kayla was part of the Bessie award winning ensemble Skeleton Architecture while also performing with MBDance/Maria Bauman, Sydnie L. Mosley/SLMDances and Gesel Mason. 

Kayla has developed/designed access centered programming for the Mellon Foundation, Movement Research, DanceNYC and UCLA Dancing Disability Lab. She is the co-director of Angela’s Pulse/Dancing While Black with Marguerite Hemmings, Paloma McGregor and Joya Powell.  

As an educator, Kayla co-developed ‘Crip Movement Lab’ with collaborator Elisabeth Motley—a pedagogical framework centering cross-disability movement practices which they have taught in multiple dance centers and universities around the country. Kayla has also worked as a K-12 public school special education teacher in NYC for 12 years. 

In 2024-25 Kayla will go on both a performance tour with her show ‘How to Bend Down/How to Pick It Up’ (premiered in Summer 2024 at The Shed in NYC) and an educational tour with ‘Crip Movement Lab’.

A young Black woman with braids pulled into a ponytail. She wears metal glasses and a black sweatshirt.

Kiersten Shorts

Personal Care Attendant to the Founder
she/her/hers

Kiersten Shorts works as a Personal Care Attendant for India Harville. Kiersten is an experienced attendant and Certified Nursing Assistant. She takes pride in supporting people in their healing journeys in any way she can.  Kiersten’s keen attention to detail makes her an excellent attendant. Additionally, she has experience with social media and brand development.  Kiersten wants to learn more about Embraced Body so she can support the organization alongside the rest of the team. Being around India and JJ feels like more than a job; they feel like family. She experiences the Embraced Body work atmosphere as warm and peaceful. Kiersten’s favorite color is aqua blue, and she enjoys reading, dancing, singing, taking pictures, and creating things.

Susana Baker Boey, Brand Strategist and Web Designer for Embraced Body, is a white Latina. She has medium length light brown hair. She is subtly smiling at the camera. She is wearing a dark green blouse.

Susana Baker BOey

Operations & Marketing + Brand & Web Designer
she/her/hers

With a creative career spanning a decade, Susana Baker Boey spent years as a marketer in NYC and DC, working for a Spanish-language media company, a political ad agency, and an event marketing firm.

She founded her own creative agency in 2021 and has since supported corporations, nonprofits, and small businesses with brand strategy, marketing, web design, and copywriting. Select clients include: Alliance for Global Inclusion, Univision, Interwell, Swisslog Healthcare, ADC Consulting, Untethered to Rooted, Nonprofit Nomad, Novac Consulting, and Rachel Ann Coaching.

Susana’s work has consistently been lauded by industry organizations, garnering recognitions in marketing, writing, web content, brand development, and more from: American Business Awards (Stevie®), Digiday Media Awards, Cynopsis Media Awards, Telly Awards, and Shorty Social Good Awards.

She operates in a way that centers empathy, clarity, integrity, and joy, which means you can expect a friendly space where being fully human is very much allowed.

Born and raised in Georgia, Susana is Colombian-American, fully bilingual, and now based in the NYC metro area. With family all over the globe, she travels often, taking her business with her. Her neurodiverse, multicultural family includes her Malaysian-New Zealander husband and her rescue dachshund, Lucy (who often crashes client meetings.) Susana studied at the University of Georgia, where she graduated top of her class with degrees in Mass Media Journalism and Theatre.

Tammy Johnson, a Dance Artist at Embraced Body is a middle aged Black woman. She is warmly smiling as she wears a blue blouse with yellow patterns and mid-length locs..

Tammy Johnson

Black Spirit Dance Collective Artist
she/her/hers

Tammy Johnson is very clear. Her life’s purpose is to be a happy Black woman. Some days that shows up as a shimmy in the middle of a workshop on racial equity, and on others it is simply a pause for breath. Johnson is a dancer, producer, culture keeper, writer, equity consultant and godmother extraordinaire. Her kinfolk in Tennessee taught her early on how to be a love-warrior as they fought for their right to just be as Black people. Later as a community organizer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Johnson directed living wage, welfare rights, public education, and election campaigns. She has partnered with World Trust and Art / Work Practice and spent a decade at Race Forward advancing racial justice at as a national organizer, trainer, writer, policy analyst and public speaker. Johnson co-produced the television special Colorlines: Race and Economic Recovery with LinkTV, and has written for the Christian Science Monitor, The Huffington Post, and Colorlines.com. She was also project manager of creativesinplace.org, a listening project and digital platform that features the stories of Bay Area artists and their work. As an independent consultant she has successfully brought movement and artistic wisdom to the fore with groups like The Laundry Mat Project and the Young Women’s Freedom Center. Based in Oakland, California, Johnson stays true to her path by embracing work that moves us all closer to a world of justice and healing, and most importantly, by embracing work that gives her joy.

Taunya Black, an Organizational Consultant with Embraced Body. She is a mixed race woman with thick curly hair and some greys at her roots. She wears a blue shirt and light grey cardigan..

Taunya Black

Politicized Healer and Ongoing Collaborator
she/her/hers

Taunya has professional roots in non-profit and educational settings, where she has served in various capacities, including: teacher, program director, executive director and DEI director, as well as expertise in organizational development and strategic management consulting.

In 2018, she co-founded Momentum Collaborative, a DEIB and organizational development consultancy dedicated to supporting organizational shifts in culture, policy and practice. She has worked on DEIB initiatives for a wide variety of organizations, including Brooklyn Friends School, The Pacific Center for Human Growth, California Institute of Integral Studies, Public Equity Group, Food Corps, California Academy of Sciences, NACTO, Data & Society, Bay Area Legal Aid, Bay Area Book Festival, Save the Bay, Pantheon, Plus Company, Smarter Balanced, Community Solutions, International Rescue Committee, BLOCK and the Bridgespan Group.

In addition to her work with organizations, Taunya served as an adjunct professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies and, in 2019, she was honored to curate a mental health conference specifically addressing the mental health of Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color. 

Currently, Taunya is launching a new consultancy, Resonant Source Consulting, a firm dedicated to supporting values and mission driven organizations, communities and individuals with culture change and DEIB initiatives, health and well-being. Taunya also maintains a private therapy and reiki practice in the Bay Area, (Ohlone Land) where her work centers on supporting individual working through a variety of challenges, including: complex and developmental trauma, racial identity and interracial relationships, sexuality, co-dependency, anxiety, depression, domestic violence and life transitions, and energetic healing.

Taunya holds a BA in Urban Studies and Dance from Barnard College, a BA in Creative Writing from SUNY Empire State, and an MA in Counseling Psychology from The California Institute of Integral Studies. She has trained in EMDR and somatic modalities, and is a certified level 2 Reiki practitioner. Taunya has also received certifications in Kundalini and NAAM yogas, and the Harmonyum healing system.

As bi-racial, Black, bi-coastal, pan-sexual queer, cis womxn and single parent, with familial roots in both the Northeast and the South, Taunya has a lived, experiential understanding of the ways in which binaries operate within the American cultural landscape, and inform the complexities of our collective consciousness. She is able to traverse the binaries, and the spaces in between, with empathy.