JAIYA JOHN
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PROFESSIONAL BIOGRAPHY
- Founder and Executive Director of SOUL WATER RISING
- Internationally recognized professional speaker
- Has addressed over 200,000 youth and adults
- Author, Lyric of Silence, a poetic telling of the human soul journey
- Author, adoption memoir Black Baby White Hands: A View from the Crib
- Author, Reflection Pond, a meditation on identity, culture, and healing in children separated from original family
- Author, Beautiful, poetry celebrating children and youth separated from original family
- Author, Legendary, a poetic tribute to those who honorably serve devalued children
- Doctor of social psychology with a focus on identity and intergroup relations
- Two decades as a speaker, author, poet, and youth mentor and advocate
- Consultant to child welfare, social service, and educational organizations worldwide
- Professor of social psychology at Howard University 1995-1998
- Associate Director, National Center on Permanency for African American Children 1999-2001
Jaiya John is the founder of Soul Water Rising, a global human mission based in Silver Spring, Maryland. He serves as a professional speaker; poet; author; and youth mentor and advocate. Jaiya has addressed thousands of youth and adults internationally, always with the intent of stirring the soul to remember itself. This work is truly his mission, ministry, and life. Jaiya is a doctor of psychology, and previously was a professor of social psychology at Howard University from 1995 from 1998, and associate director for the National Center on Permanency for African American Children from 1999 to 2001.
Through the Young Life Drumbeat program, Jaiya offers youth mentoring, leadership, and heritage projects; along with creative literacy contests and projects. Jaiya’s work with youth centers on positive, productive identity as a root for life success and achieving purpose. Globally, Jaiya is invested in healing and treating our human spirit for its fundamental ailment: failure to recognize our inescapable oneness in the web of life. This same web offers our way out of suffering. From work on global and local social disparities; to conflict and trauma between and within groups; to the fragile life arc from childhood through adulthood, Jaiya reaches for our personal and collective giftedness to release human beauty from its self-imposed cage of misunderstanding.
Jaiya was born into foster care in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He attended Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and earned his doctorate from the University of California, Santa Cruz in social psychology, focusing on identity development and intergroup relations. In 1988 he lived in the Himalayan nation of Nepal, where his study of Tibetan medicine gave him insight into holistic concepts of physical, emotional, and spiritual health. Being of not only African (including Balanta, Mende, and Kru) but also Blackfeet and Cherokee descent; and having grown up immersed in New Mexico’s American Indian and Latino cultures, Jaiya has a deep appreciation for the spiritual and communal passions that spring from these worlds. This spirit he ingrains in his messages about our social world.
EDUCATION
Ph.D. University of California, Santa Cruz; 1994; social psychology.
M.S. University of California, Santa Cruz; 1992; social psychology.
B.A. Lewis & Clark College, Portland, OR; 1989; psychology.
International Study: Kathmandu, Nepal. 1988. Comprehensive study of the nation (language, history, education, medicine, ethnic groups, etc.), including qualitative, interview survey study of Tibetan medicine philosophy and Tibetan doctors.
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