Dr. Yasmene Mumby began her yoga and meditation practice eleven years ago while teaching middle school Social Studies in Baltimore City Public Schools. She was looking for a natural way to calm her rushing anxiety and restore her energy. Frustrated by the inequities impacting the achievement and wellbeing of students and teachers every day, she channeled this deep grief in her hometown’s schools as a trained Organizer through the Industrial Areas Foundation. Yasmene led numerous organizing victories with over 3,000 parent, teacher, and student leaders, from securing filtered lead-free water for students to organizing teachers in an unprecedented contract negotiation, to stopping $150 million in operational budget cuts, to securing up to $1 billion to rebuild schools. Her organizing and teaching background continue to shape her journey as a writer unafraid of sharing stories of folx unheard.

Yasmene now works through yoga, sound art, organizing strategy, and digital mediums. She loves working in partnership with leaders hungry to change and dismantle systems that get in the way of our collective liberation. Dr. Mumby’s work is a source of sustaining & healing expression. At the nexus of scholarship, art, and social movement, she leverages her writing about lived experiences of minoritized people of color and their rising paths of resilience, persistence, breakdown, and power for impact. Elephant Journal published her incisive essay, Amplify Black Voices: Yoga, you can do better. She is the creator of the NPR hosted audio documentary, Higher Purpose, about an organization that supports people with legal system records to gain livable wage employment in Baltimore.

Yasmene earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Johns Hopkins University and its School of Education, along with a Juris Doctor and Doctorate in Education Leadership from University of Maryland School of Law and Harvard Graduate School of Education, respectively.

She just released her latest sound art piece: Ahimsa, the audio memoir on yoga, wellness, and Black Lives in 2020.