A. Adar Ayira has more than 25 years of management and organizational development, membership, and TA experience gained through her tenure in both locally and nationally focused nonprofit, community based, social justice organizations. She is Principal Consultant of Ayira Core Concepts LLC (ACC-LLC), a boutique consulting firm that provides skills development; strategic planning; technical assistance; organizational, board, and program development; and project management for nonprofit organizations and corporations.

For more than 20 years, Adar has been an educator, facilitator, and trainer on Racial Equity / ARAO (Anti-Racism/Anti-Oppression) and has created and implemented customized programs, presentations, facilitations, clinics and trainings — as well as provided executive coaching — for nonprofit organizations, businesses, foundations, community groups, and individuals in the region. She works with organizations with a focus on assisting with the re-envisioning, development, and implementation of policies, practices, and organizational cultures that enable more inclusive systems and structures.

As a co-founding member and Advisory Board Member of Baltimore Racial Justice Action (BRJA) — a Baltimore-based organization of facilitators and trainers with a national client-base that has celebrated 15 years of action — Adar was instrumental in developing its core curriculum for its introductory and Training of Trainer workshops; began its Baltimore Activists of Color Organized for Equity (BACOE) affinity group; and continues to work with the organization as Senior Facilitator/Consultant and Trainer of their trainers.

The 2011 recipient of the YWCA Baltimore’s Racial Justice Award, Adar is a popular racial equity speaker, presenter, frequent radio guest, panel moderator, and facilitator/trainer in nonprofit, business, community, and other forums. A Poet/Spoken Word Artist in the Baltimore-Washington area, she has been a featured performer at Center Stage, the Spotlight Theatre, the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Meyers Maritime Museum, and the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, among other venues. Adar has also created and guided programming using poetry as a healing and empowerment tool for Catherine’s Hearth and for women residing at Jessup Correctional Institution.

She was a contributing author to the national teaching text “Lessons from ‘The Color of Fear’: Field Reports” (Volume IV), Baltimore Open City, and various poetry publications, and was a contributing blogger for Rooflines, the National Housing Institute’s Shelterforce blog. Adar has also worked in three major radio markets and was host of a popular public affairs show called “Public Notice” in the Washington DC market.