Our Teku Community 

Sam, (she/her,) is a clinically trained social worker and educator specializing in LGBTQ inclusion. For the past 8 years, Sam worked at a prominent Children’s Hospital to support transgender and gender diverse youth and their families. In this role, Sam would lead professional development workshops for local K-12th grade educators, counselors, and administrators on how to best support gender affirmation and inclusion for all students. Sam also worked alongside parents to help them better support their child’s gender development. As a cisgender woman, Sam recognizes the impacts gender has on all of us and aims to support cisgender folks on their process for unlearning gender assumptions to create a world where we can all be free from gendered expectations.

Dr.Barbara Robles-Ramamurthy, she/her, is a nationally recognized, community-centered psychiatrist, scholar, educator and leader who knows the value of prevention and early support to promote child and family mental health. As a mother and clinician, her vision for Teku is grounded in opportunities she has observed to improve family mental health even before children are born.  Her vision for family and community mental health includes the collective creation of health promoting spaces and ways of living that benefit us all. Barbara has received numerous awards and national recognition for her embrace of trauma-informed, equity focused and community-grounded approaches to mental health. She received her medical training at Baylor College of Medicine, the University of Pennsylvania and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She has training in Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Prolonged Exposure Therapy, among other therapeutic interventions, and she is additionally certified as a yoga instructor and has training on the impact of nutrition on health.  Barbara is the visionary, community co-creator, coach and community educator for Teku.

Melanie, she/her, is a first generation Mexican-American, Full Spectrum Doula. She has 3 children of her own to which she has devoted her life to. Melanie’s passion for birth work grew after an empowered experience the second time she gave birth around versus the first time around, much like most women who give birth in the United States. She has a heart of gold and her intuition brought her onto this doula journey. She is now 4 years into her career and working on many projects to amplify Latin voices especially for Latin pregnant women/people. Melanie has a special place in her heart for immigrant people as her family are all immigrants, and is passionate about offering excellent services to this community. She has supported women from Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, Africa, Costa Rica, India, and Portugal. She has created several avenues and resources for people who are in their reproductive years to have education and support, throughout such a life changing event. Melanie believes that “All people deserve support when bringing babies earthside.” Melanie collaborates with Teku to create childbirth and perinatal education and support services.

Aza Stephen Allsop, MD, PhD, he/they, is a first-generation American who grew up in Trinidad before living in a number of different states on the east coast. He studied Biology, Philosophy, and Jazz Studies at North Carolina Central University. He carried out his PhD training in Neuroscience at MIT as part of the Harvard Medical School-MIT MD PhD program and was an Emerson Scholar at Berklee College of Music. He studies how social information is computed, integrated, and biased in the brain and how music, mindfulness, and psychedelics change social behavior. His research is guided by the belief that deconstructing these mechanisms will provide a better understanding of how social groups function and offer insights into enhancing the evolution of society at large. AZA teaches mindfulness and yoga and is involved in efforts to increase exposure to tools that help reduce the impact of stress and promote empathic behavior. He is co-founder of Renaissance Entertainment LLC, a company that operates at the intersection of art, science, and community building to influence culture. He creates and performs music rooted in the energy of the African Diaspora.