Bernadette Onyenaka

Bernadette Onyenaka is the Racial Equity Manager for the National League of Cities Race, Equity, and Leadership (REAL) initiative. In this role, she provides technical assistance to a cohort of six cities on governing for racial equity, by engaging with local elected officials and key city staff on how develop and take strategic actions to development and implement comprehensive city-wide racial equity plans. Additionally, she leads the development of REAL’s racial equity training curriculum, in order increase the capacity, competence, and readiness of municipal leaders and personnel to recognize and subsequently dismantle systemic and institutional racism through policy, practice, procedural, and cultural change. Her work is enriched and advanced by her focused areas of expertise, which include the social determinants of health, anti-oppression/liberation ideology, intersectionality, curriculum development, facilitation, and program development, and program management. Her primary focus is to engage and facilitate both programmatic and systems level change, through the unflinching examination of interconnectedness of systems of oppression, and the application of a racial equity theory of change. Ms. Onyenaka earned both her Bachelor’s degree in Health Behavior Management and Master’s degree in Health Promotion from the University of Delaware. She currently resides in Washington, D.C.