Jalateefa Joe-Meyers

Jalateefa Joe-Meyers is an advanced practice generalist social worker licensed in school social work, therapy, education administration, and special education. She is trained in a multitude of research-based models that she has implemented across Wisconsin. Joe-Meyers’s strength lies in her strong background in program development, delivery, and evaluation in both educational and community-based settings, culturally responsive practices, and intersectionality awareness that helps to build strong relationships.

Joe-Meyers is the founder of a local non-profit, Sankofa Educational Leadership United (SELU). SELU is an agency that has a mission to dismantle institutional racism and systemic barriers that create disparities that marginalized populations experience in Wisconsin under three pillars of service; education, criminal justice, and health. SELU’s service delivery model was developed with the intention of lifting the most vulnerable in the community, which research and statistics have defined as Black women and children. Most notably, Joe-Meyers’s experiences as a Black woman and a single mother with a variety of socioeconomic statuses throughout her lifetime brings a unique perspective through the dual lens of a practitioner and marginalized woman that has personally experienced institutionalized racism and developed significant racial fatigue—a trauma that impacts her own heath.

Joe-Meyers is passionate about antiracist work, both as a practitioner and as a survivor. She continues to analyze service delivery practices to dismantle racist systems that impact families.