Ayo Magwood

Ayo Magwood, M.Sc., specializes in evidence-based, politically-neutral, and solution-oriented training on remediating structural racism. Her passion for fostering cross-difference cooperation towards realizing equal opportunity for all is informed by her personal experiences as a cultural border crosser. The daughter of civil rights activists, she is African American and biracial, and grew up in Tanzania, Liberia, and Saudi Arabia. As an adult, she worked in Belgium and in rural Mexico. She speaks near-fluent Spanish.

Ayo was recognized as a leading expert on social justice teaching in an April 2023 Harvard Educational Review journal article. She has presented for the National Council for Social Studies (NCSS); the New York State Association of Independent Schools (NYSAIS); The Association for Independent Maryland and DC Schools (AIMS); The National Association of Independent Schools’ People of Color Conference (NAIS PoCC); and the Teaching Black History Conference.

She is the co-author of “5 Ways to Teach About Structural Racism in Polarized Times” in Psychology Today (2022), the author of “Why ‘Elite’ Independent Schools Can’t Retain Black and Brown Faculty” in Anti-Oppressive Education in “Elite” Schools (2021), and co-author of “Using Conceptual Tensions and Supreme Court Cases to Increase Critical Thinking in Government and Civics Classrooms” in Social Education (2013).

Ayo has a B.A. from Brown University and a M.Sc. in applied economics from Cornell University. She is a former high school educator and economic research analyst. She resides in Washington, DC with her husband and son, and enjoys writing about her family history in her spare time.