“Without community, there is no liberation.”
— Audre Lorde
Our Team
Tirrany Thurmond
Tirrany Thurmond, M.Ed., NCC, LGPC, is the founder and principal consultant of Idaltu Counseling & Consulting, a Baltimore-based educational consulting firm that specializes in fusing the healing practices of mental health counseling with social justice advocacy and antiracist education to create anti-oppressive communities.
With a resume that spans over nearly a decade in large and small university settings, Tirrany is an esteemed equity and inclusion practitioner and student affairs leader. Her professional tenure consists of assisting university leadership on matters of diversity and inclusion, creating equitable programs and access for historically underserved populations, and consulting organizations on matters of social equality.
Tirrany is a national board-certified counselor and a Licensed Graduate Professional Counselor in the state of Maryland. Her areas of interest are trauma and race-based stress, destigmatizing mental illness in communities of color, and building culturally proficient practitioners. She’s a qualified administrator of the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) and certified Safe Zone facilitator.
Tirrany earned an undergraduate degree in behavior analysis from Savannah State University and a master’s in counselor education with an emphasis in clinical mental health from Georgia Southern University. She’s a member of the Maryland Diversity Roundtable and the Maryland Equity Inclusion Leadership Program.
Micahela Mobley
Motivated by honoring the past, defining the present, and working towards a liberated future, Micahela “Mickey” Mobley, MS (she/they) uses her passions in service to the healing of their communities.
Born and raised in Maryland, Mickey has over 10 years working in community organizing in the Baltimore area and 6 years working in higher education at various institutions as a student affairs practitioner, social justice educator, and lecturer of Black studies, women’s studies, justice studies and student development. She earned her Bachelors degree in psychology from Mount St. Mary’s University and Masters degree in clinical psychology from Loyola University Maryland.
Mickey currently serves as the Assistant Director of the Harvard College Women’s Center at Harvard University. Their research, writing, and praxis explores Afro-Caribbean identity and culture, race/ism, queer Black feminisms and sexualities, and healing through African and Diasporic traditional religions as tools for a liberated self and collective. As a liberation seeker, Mickey is dedicated to living life with a defiant joy in an oppressive world.
Kyra Shahid
Kyra Shahid, Ph.D. is a purpose doula and educational consultant. She is the principal owner of KTS Consulting, LLC, which provides healing-centered professional and student development in response to the impact of racial trauma and systemic inequities in the classroom and the workplace.
Dr. Shahid has over ten years of experience in higher education. Her many passions and professional experiences reflect a particular commitment to empowering historically excluded populations, namely Black and Brown people, to recover, preserve, and amplify dreams that are at risk of spirit murder brought on by the presence of systemic racial inequities. Dr. Shahid currently serves as Assistant Director with a focus on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching at the University of Michigan. She is also Vice President of Educational Initiatives for the Bryant Educational Leadership Group, helping to provide non-traditional leadership experiences for students on a global level.
Dr. Shahid is a gifted scholar and practitioner, whose work has been recognized as innovative, dynamic, and unique as it expands traditional diversity, equity, and inclusion practices. She is a powerful orator, djembe drummer, and ideator. Dr. Shahid earned her B.A. in Broadcast Media from Central State University, and her M.S. and Ph.D. from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Her dissertation examined the use of spirituality as a tool for navigating academia among Black women faculty. She is the author of Anti-Black Racism and Epistemic Violence (2018).
Eugene Smith
Eugene Smith has a Master’s degree in Higher Education Administration and is a current Doctoral Candidate at Morgan State University. He is expected to defend his dissertation in September 2021.
Eugene works at Frederick Community College as the Assistant Director of Multicultural Student Services where he oversees several programs. He has seven years of professional experience in student affairs and program development. He is well versed in creating and establishing campus wide diversity and inclusion initiatives that advance student’s abilities to persist, be retained, and matriculate in college. His experience includes assessment and evaluation of programs for students of color, adult learners, international students, low-income, and other historically underrepresented populations. He has a passion for assessing and evaluating programs for institutional effectiveness.
Beth Douthirt-Cohen
Beth Douthirt-Cohen, PhD (she/her/hers or they/them/theirs) has 20 years of experience focused on racial justice, disability justice, LGBTQIA+ justice, gender justice, and addressing all forms of religious bias. The former Deputy Chief Diversity Officer at the University of Maryland (UMD), Beth currently is the the senior diversity officer at Frederick Community College (MD).
Beth’s work focuses on building institutional and individual capacity to interrupt and effectively address current and historical legacies of all forms of oppression, centering racial justice, from board rooms to hallways to zoom rooms to classrooms. Educated at Barnard College, Harvard University, and UMD, Beth’s research looks at how we can strengthen the capacity of majoritized peoples to engage—ethically, effectively, and with accountability—across differences in identity, power, and privilege. Her graduate level teaching focuses on how to change the culture of organizations and schools, critical race theory, critical disability theory, and research for social and political change.