Humanizing Education to Access and Activate Joy
"We are not the survival of the fittest, we are the survival of the nurtured." Louis Cozolino
Who We Are
TrUTH Educational Consulting is a partnership between two dynamic and visionary educators: Shawn Nealy-Oparah and Tovi Scruggs-Hussein. Shawn and Tovi initially connected through a mutual colleague, who envisioned the pair co-teaching a graduate class on trauma-informed leadership at Mills College—and they've been working together ever since. Both women bring passion, a finely-tuned equity lens, and a love of learning and teaching to this work. They are energized by supporting educators' understanding of trauma and engaging in trauma-informed teaching practices. Their work together is informed by their unique experience with a wide range of related capacities, including somatic abolitionism and trauma, mindfulness, equity in education, and family engagement.
Shawn Nealy-Oparah, Ed.D.
Shawn Nealy-Oparah, E.D., is an innovative, somatic abolitionist and trauma-responsive educator with over 20 years of experience in teaching and leadership. Her work also centers on restorative justice and culturally relevant and popular education pedagogy. Shawn is an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco School of Education. Her teaching and research center on the neuroscience of stress, emotionally intelligent leadership practices, and deconditioning, decolonizing, and detoxing from historical, collective, and personal trauma.
A former teacher and vice principal, she supports school leaders in developing holistic and humanizing practices to transform teaching and learning in the lowest-performing schools as a senior leader at a San Francisco non-profit equity organization. Shawn is passionate about the quality of human connection, understanding relationship legacies, and the power and quality of emotional intelligence.
Tovi Scruggs-Hussein, M.Ed.
Tovi Scruggs-Hussein is a visionary educator, author, and award-winning urban high school principal with over 25 years of mindfulness experience. She is an expert and leader in equity and emotional intelligence. Tovi serves as California’s Regional Executive Director of Partners in School Innovation, a non-profit focused on equity and improving educational outcomes in the lowest-performing schools in our nation. Further, Tovi is ACSA’s State Equity Region 6 Representative and founding teacher of both ACSA’s Equity Academy as well as Mills College’s trauma-informed leadership course. Certified in both integral coaching at New Ventures West and mindful leadership at Search Inside Yourself, Tovi is passionate about facilitating workshops in equity, family engagement, trauma-informed leadership, and emotional intelligence.