Afua Addo is the Chief Program Officer at Perception Institute and a trauma-focused mental health specialist who specializes in the intersection of trauma, justice and equitable, trauma-informed service provision.

A nationally recognized advocate, Afua supported White House Roundtables in 2015/2016 Intervening Public Systems: Interrupting the Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline and has facilitated training for over ten thousand people. Afua created municipal, state and federal legal training curricula and court-based programming to transform approaches to gender-based violence and address the needs of systems-involved women and youth with the NYS Unified Court System with the Center for Court Innovation. She has consulted with A Call to Men, V-Day, Women’s Prison Association and the Southern Poverty Law Center and is on the board of Girls for Gender Equity.

For over twenty years, Afua has served as an advocate while also pursuing art as a professional vocal/performance artist and debuted in concert at Carnegie Hall in 2009. In 2016, Afua was selected as a Move to End Violence Fellow and by Essence Magazine as one of the Woke100 women blazing trails to achieve equity; she is a graduate of the University of Virginia and Fordham University and is proudly from Brooklyn, NY.