Kevonya Elzia, MA, BS, RN is a hospice nurse and the former Director of Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for the National Healthcare for the Homeless Council. She has been in healthcare for 24 years, with 21 of those years as a nurse in various roles, ranging from acute care to community health, including working as a housing health outreach nurse in permanent supportive housing.
While working as a Registered Nurse, she completed her Bachelor’s degree in Human Services, focusing on understanding the role of social paradigms, system structures, and institutional policies in relation to the gaps within our current medical model. She then obtained a Master’s Degree in Integrative Health, where she researched ways to heal trauma through individual and collective processes that address trauma’s root causes and seek to end the manifestations of violence in our systems and institutions.
She utilizes a healing-centered restorative engagement approach, which emphasizes leveraging strengths to support the healing and restoration of individuals or communities affected by harm. Kevonya focuses on helping organizations recognize racial healing as essential to public health and personal well-being. Over the past eleven years, she has developed curricula and tools to assist individuals and organizations in dismantling the systems and social practices that perpetuate cycles of internalized, interpersonal, and institutional oppression.