Kimberly A. Collins is Founder and Executive Director of So Others Ascend Righteously (SOAR) first established SOAR’s transformational writing for healing workshops as an LLC in 1998. After a 10 year hiatus, in 2017, SOAR was formed as a nonprofit.

Ms. Collins earned her MFA in poetry from Spalding University and is a published poet, author of two books of poetry and professor of English at Howard University. Her six and eight-week writing for healing workshop design includes her trademarked Writing Training Wheels™ included in her collection of inspirational essays: Choose You! Wednesday Wisdom’s to Wake Your Soul!

She has the distinction of being the first employee for the D.C. Coalition Against Domestic Violence where she wrote the National Coalition’s oft recited poem: “Remember My Name.” Her work with teen moms, domestic violence survivors, drug addicted persons and incarcerated youth help to shape the curriculum she now uses.

As Project Coordinator for Johns Hopkins Empowering Neighborhood People Project, where she galvanized community members in a variety of wards in D.C. along with her work as a community building consultant to HUD, Ms. Collins sees her work through a unique lens to understand community and its members to assess the individual and collective work that needs to happen to heal and to empower villages where black women reside.