I Am the Work.
The Positionality of Dr. Rhonesha L. Blaché, Ed.D.
I am Rhonesha L. Blaché — a healer, educator, and builder of worlds that have not yet been given permission to exist. I arrive at every table, classroom, and community space carrying the wisdom of my ancestors, the rigor of my scholarship, and the full weight of my lived experience as a Black woman who has spent 30+ years learning, unlearning, and re-membering what education was always meant to be.
"I was not trained into this work. I was called to it."
My ontology is rooted in Ubuntu — I am because we are — and shaped by the Black feminist, African-centered, and African-rooted women scholars who refused to separate their knowing from their being. I do not study communities from a distance. I have taught children in Germany, the Dominican Republic, the United States, and across the African diaspora. I have built programs, evaluated them, broken them down, and rebuilt them better — always in service of the people, never in service of the institution.
I live with ADHD and navigate the kind of mental and emotional labor that comes with doing visionary work in a world that was not built for people like me. I name this not as limitation, but as context — because healing-centered education is not just what I teach. It is how I survive, and how I thrive.
Four ways I show up.
Healer & Community Builder
My life's purpose is to use education as a method of healing and as a way of recognizing the full power individuals, families, and communities already carry — and supporting them in enacting it across generations.
Black Woman · Lived Experience
My Blackness is not incidental to my work. It is the source of it. My Afro-Caribbean heritage, diaspora connections, and ancestors' wisdom are the foundation upon which everything I build is grounded.
Scholar-Practitioner · Ed.D.
Doctorate in Interdisciplinary Studies from Teachers College, Columbia University — WEB DuBois Scholar. Dissertation explored teaching as an act of historical re-membering for Black students. Taught in Germany, the Dominican Republic, the United States, and across the Caribbean.
Entrepreneur & Visionary
Founder of BLACHE Education LLC and architect of the Black Cake Framework. Building schools, walking with educators, and positioning healing-centered, African-rooted education as the standard — not the exception.
The question that was already answered.
Long before I built BLACHE Education, I sat under my own tree with the same book in my lap: Who Am I? Sankofa teaches that what appears lost is not lost — we can always reach back and fetch what was set aside. The answer arrived in lineage, in language, in the hands of teachers who saw me, and in the ancestors whose names I learned to speak again.
Returning to myself is what made this work possible. Every learner I walk with is invited to ask the same question — and to trust that the answer is already inside them, carried by their people, waiting to be claimed.
Dr. Blaché will expand this story in her own words soon.
BLACHE Education at a glance.
- Ed.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies · Teachers College, Columbia University, NY
- Dissertation: Teaching to (Re)member through an Advanced Placement Seminar with African Diaspora Content
- M.A.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction · University of Phoenix
- B.S. in Psychology (Human Development) · Arizona State University
- Arizona Elementary (K–8) Teaching Certificate · Middle School Math · SEI · IB Certificate
- WEB DuBois Scholar · Teachers College, Columbia University (2019–2022)
- Duquès Social Justice Scholar · Teachers College, Columbia University (2018–2019)
- Invited speaker at 20+ national and international conferences — University of Manitoba, OISE University of Toronto, World Educational Research Association, University of the West Indies
- Global Africa CIES Liaison (2025–present) · Chair, CIES Afrika & African Diaspora SIG (2020–2024)
A lineage of collaborators.
Logos populate as Dr. Blaché shares her partner list.
"I do not stand outside the work. I am the work."
Let's build something honest, together.
Book a free 30-minute discovery call — Ubuntu in practice — and let's talk about healing-centered, African-rooted education for you and your people.
Book a Free Discovery Call