About the Founder and Director
Dr. Johonna McCants is an educator, scholar, and organizer whose research and practice focus on Black youth activism, violence against youth, and incarceration and criminalization. She received a 2007 Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship from the Open Society Institute to launch the Visions to Peace Project. As the founding director of Visions to Peace, Johonna has conducted research on transformative justice and community-based responses to violence; developed and facilitated workshops for youth organizers and educators on holistic anti-violence praxis; and designed and implemented youth leadership programs integrating peace education, media production, performing arts, and trauma healing. Altogether, she has over ten years of experience developing and coordinating programs that connect arts and media with youth leadership development and community activism. Dr. McCants received her Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Maryland, College Park in May 2010. Her dissertation is titled, “Re-Visioning Violence: How Black Youth Advance Critical Understandings of Violence in Climates of Criminalization.” Johonna also holds a Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies from the University of Maryland. She also earned two Bachelors degrees from the University of Missouri -Columbia – a Bachelor of Journalism in news-editorial journalism with a minor in political science and a Bachelor of Arts in interdisciplinary studies with an emphasis in Black studies. She is a member of Peace Fellowship Church, the Christian Community Development Association and Incite! Women of Color Against Violence.
