Biographical Work History & Professional Profile

 

New York foundations: dance, performance, and artist-created worlds  |  1980s–1995

Raised on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Keita studied dance and art and entered New York’s alternative cultural life in the 1980s. She worked at Danceteria, appeared as a Screen Actors Guild performer in Desperately Seeking Susan, and participated in experimental dance, cabaret, and performance environments in Manhattan and Williamsburg. As part of the Brooklyn Immersionist milieu, she helped create performances in clubs, bars, galleries, homes, streets, and repurposed industrial spaces. She also founded Expressions Family Day Care in Williamsburg, an arts-centered early-childhood program.

• Performance credits include Danceteria All-Star Show, Brain Stain, Organism, Culture Shock, Longing, and collaborative works associated with Hit & Run Theater and Fishbowl.

• Founded and directed Expressions Family Day Care, integrating drama, visual art, music, dance, food, and emotional exploration.

Maine arrival: food security, cultural organizing, and public service  |  1995–2001

After relocating to Maine in 1995, Keita began a sustained period of community organizing and public service. As an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer with the Maine Coalition for Food Security, she coordinated food-access initiatives, including a community bread drive, a low-income food cooperative, and the annual Portland Food Festival. At the University of Southern Maine, she became a Dialogues in Diversity leader and helped establish the ALANA Student Center.

• AmeriCorps VISTA Special Projects Community Coordinator, Maine Coalition for Food Security, 1997–1999.

• ALANA Student Center Coordinator, University of Southern Maine, 1999–2000.

• Community Voices contributing columnist, Portland Press Herald, 2000–2001.

• Organizer of early Portland Kwanzaa community education and performance programs.

Social work, research, education, and multicultural leadership  |  2001–2011

Keita earned her BSW and MSW from the University of Southern Maine as a Parents as Scholars participant, graduating magna cum laude and serving as the first African American president of USM’s Phi Alpha Honor Society. Her professional work crossed child welfare, applied research, higher education, teaching, multicultural student affairs, facilitation, and organizational change.

• Child Protective Social Worker, Maine DHHS Bureau of Children and Family Services, 2001–2003.

• Assistant Research Analyst, Muskie School/Cutler Institute, 2003–2005, contributing to violence-against-women and children-exposed-to-violence initiatives.

• Co-Interim Director, Multicultural Student Affairs, University of Southern Maine, 2005–2008.

• Founder and facilitator, Cultivating Multicultural Alliances, 2006–2011.

• Adjunct instructor, Kaplan University, 2006–2009, and Southern Maine Community College, 2007–2010.

• Producer and host, Mama Afrika Show, WMPG Community Radio, approximately 2005–2014.

Clinical and somatic practice  |  2010–early 2020s

Working in schools, homes, outpatient settings, and private practice, Keita developed an embodied approach to adversity, family systems, intergenerational trauma, and racialized stress. She completed Kripalu Yoga Teacher Training and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner certification, taught gentle, trauma-informed yoga, and founded Redefining Therapy and Ready, Set, Thrive. She later developed Somatic Liberation Dance Waves for BIPOC communal healing.

• School- and community-based clinician, Community Counseling Center and Portland Public Schools, 2010–2013.

• In-home behavioral health professional and family clinician serving rural Androscoggin and Oxford Counties, 2010–2015.

• Founder/private practitioner, Redefining Therapy, beginning 2014; later founder of Ready, Set, Thrive.

• Yoga instruction for elders, cancer patients, and women survivors of war and torture.

• Racial Equity Officer, Maine College of Art & Design, 18-month appointment.

• Founder, Harriet Tubman Movement Coalition and Somatic Liberation Dance Waves.

Visual art comes fully forward  |  2021–present

In recent years, Keita has moved from a therapist-centered professional identity into full-time interdisciplinary art. Her visual practice gathers decades of performance, writing, somatic inquiry, social witness, spirituality, and relationship to Maine waters. Water-Life-Flow, the Casco Bay–Downeast Collection, sculptural Sea Goddesses, the Microplastic Series, and Sacred Gems are among the bodies of work through which her Soul Mapping language has emerged.

• Performance and visual-art presentation at Space Gallery/Indigo Arts, 2021.

• Collaborative Re/Union project with Indigo Arts and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, 2022.

• Water-Life-Flow debut solo exhibition, Denmark Center for the Arts, 2024.

• Solo and group exhibitions across Maine, 2024–2026, including juried presentations.

• Essay and visual-art publication, The Water Guardians, Wabanaki REACH: Voices of Decolonization, 2026.

Keita’s Pathways: sanctuary and living legacy  |  Current initiative

Keita is the founder of Keita’s Pathways, a restorative arts sanctuary taking shape in a historic 1767 Maine stagecoach house. The project centers elder multicultural, Aboriginal, Indigenous, and mixed-race women artists, offering room for rest, creative renewal, teaching, belonging, and living legacy. It joins her artistic practice with a lifetime of community-building and her conviction that elder women creatives should be supported and honored while they are still living and making culture.

Selected Education, Training, and Recognition

• Master of Social Work, University of Southern Maine, 2005.

• Bachelor of Social Work, University of Southern Maine, 2002; magna cum laude; Phi Alpha Honor Society president; Parents as Scholars graduate.

• Somatic Experiencing Practitioner certification, 2016.

• Kripalu Yoga Teacher certification, 2008.

• Early Childhood Education studies/certificate, Borough of Manhattan Community College.

• Awards and recognition for academic excellence, diversity leadership, Parents as Scholars advocacy, women’s leadership, and AmeriCorps national service.