Marching to the Beat of Your Own Drum: Finding Your Rhythm with Chinyere Neale

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“ I would encourage everybody to treat their skill learning like their grocery shopping and they’re filling the cart. And you don’t know what you gon’ do with these mushrooms.  So I think we should all be gathering as much knowledge, as many skills, as many connections as we can as we move through life. Not to narrow ourselves unnecessarily and just gather things because you never know where it’ll lead you. There’s nothing in my early life that would have told you that I would end up being a global health  professional,  nothing. 

But that’s where I wound up and it was because I had gathered skills.  Over time, and everything that we do, whether it’s our paid work or our volunteer work or our fun work has a social justice component to it. And the way that we act, the way we treat others.  All of that, everything matters.”

—Chinyere Neale

Chinyere Neale reflects on a time in her life when the frustration she often felt toward well-meaning but uninformed white people who considered themselves allies in racial justice work became a mirror for her own growth. After attending an LGBTQIA+ ally training at work one day, she came to a humbling realization that she also had the capacity to be well-meaning but uninformed in a different way. The experience expanded her understanding of privilege and oppression, and influenced her approach to life as a “never-ending classroom”.

As a retired global public health educator from Detroit with a multifaceted career, Chinyere reflects on her upbringing in segregated Detroit, her passion for music and the arts, her role as a sexual health educator, and what led her to finally embrace being seen as a teacher. Her storytelling speaks to the importance of authenticity, keeping joy a priority in movement work, and remembering that we all have a role to play in working for social justice. 

Meet Chinyere

Chinyere Neale is a retired global public health educator who resides in Detroit Michigan. She spent 25 years encouraging and supporting public health students in their pursuit of international experience, with the intent of helping them learn skills and competencies they could use at home and abroad. She is an avid music lover, film fanatic,  recreational bike rider, mother and grandmother.

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Social Justice Origin Stories is produced, edited, and hosted by Relando Thompkins-Jones