Chioma Oruh, Ph.D., is the founder, principal consultant and parent coach of Chi Bornfree. I have a passion for family-centered practices, primarily because of my own lived experiences as an black African immigrant mother raising two young sons with autism. In my own journey to access services for my family, including my aging parents and brother with a severe mental health condition, I have faced a lot of challenges navigating the systems of care. It is my experience that the system’s dysfunctions are rooted in many institutional intelligences that rely on archaic ideas about man’s relationship with nature. Unfortunately, these ideas have historically also been used to promote racism, sexism, classism, ableism and xenophobia.

Founding Chi Bornfree provides me with the opportunity to give back some of the survival skills, strategies and institutional knowledge picked up during my own lived experiences. With a focus on early childhood education, and improving the behavioral health system in particular, from early childhood through the educational lifespan of children and youth. The pillar of my institutional knowledge is rooted in the transformative journey to helping system actors become more family-centered in policies and practices. And this has driven me to seek avenues to be of the highest service to my city, Washington, DC, to support both the public and private sectors to help dismantle old ideas informing public policy and the daily practices of front line staff, essential workers and direct service outlets, especially education, healthcare, social services and the intersection amongst all three.