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Postcards from Katrina

Dedicated to helping youth reach their dreams, Tambra speaks with youth on personal and professional development for success and wellness. She develops programs on health, nutrition, wellness,... read more Dedicated to helping youth reach their dreams, Tambra speaks with youth on personal and professional development for success and wellness. She develops programs on health, nutrition, wellness, communication, and leadership for youth and minorities. From her own healing with arts, she has used her talents to create a community arts program, Postcards from Katrina, to heal, find hope and keep faith for a better life after crisis and trauma. Growing up in Oklahoma as the oldest child, Tambra suffered from depression as a teenager. She used arts and writing to express what was happening in her world. As a middle school student, Tambra was concerned about her family's wellbeing who worked in downtown Oklahoma City near the OKC bombing of the federal building. Her father, now a retired Oklahoma City firefighter, worked that memorable day. Like many students she didn’t know what to do or to make of the experience but wanted to do something. She knows the importance of finding hope after crisis for herself and the community. Raised by her teen mom, she began working at age 16 to help her family financially. She focused on her education as a way up and out of her situation and was first in her family to graduate college. She is thankful for strong women who have helped to raise her. She is a testament to the proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.” With the personal drive and the village to support her, she overcame her personal and environmental obstacles to be the first in her family to complete college and obtain graduate education. She has been focused ever since. Her devotion to community service has been recognized. She was a National Service Scholar by President Clinton. While at the U.S. Department of Human Services in Washington, DC, she received the leadership award signed by the HHS Secretary for her leadership and management of the Combined Federal Campaign, an annual giving campaign to raise funds for local and international charities. By giving back through volunteering and mentoring, she feels the many blessings in return. Most recently she volunteered in the Gulf region where she has family. It was a life reaffirming and changing experience. From there she began creating arts from photography and creative stories and developed Postcards from Katrina as a way for the community to tell and share their stories through the power of arts to engage, to encourage people, to express themselves, and to inspire hope while making a difference in their communities. By giving and receiving hope, she believes we can become the change agents that we wish to see and to make a difference in our communities for the better. She invites people to make homemade postcards, poetry, music, and art to send stories of hope and help, because she remembers what its like to have hope, faith and love. In summer 2006, she traveled to New Orleans to work on the project and take more photography to create additional NOLA-inspired paintings for the project. While in New Orleans, the NBC affiliate (WSDU-TV) featured the project. She also revisited Gulfport and Biloxi to gather more stories. And in fall 2006, she traveled to New Orleans again to speak to schools about the project and partnered with a children’s book author who donated inspiring books to the children. Matching her visionary leadership and strategic thinking, she brings strong skills and experience in partnership and program development, marketing and communication skills. She has worked with nonprofit, government, educational, and private organizations such as Harvard Magazine, Hill Holiday, Kelley Chunn PR, Boston Black Women’s Health Institute, and Tufts University School of Medicine to name a few. She is a graduate of the Master of Science in Health Communication joint program from Tufts University School of Medicine and Emerson College in Boston, MA and received her B.S. in Human Nutritional/premedical sciences and a Spanish minor from Oklahoma State University. She completed business graduate work at Boston University Graduate School of Management. She has studied abroad at Pontificia Universidad Catolica Madre y Maestra and taught community health education in Dominican Republic. She is lives in Washington, DC. Also she is a lifetime member of Net Impact and an active member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. She is a member of the Black Public Relations Society of Washington, DC, Washington Association of Black Journalists, Public Relations Society of America, American Marketing Association, and Advertising Club of Metropolitan Washington. <br /><br /><div style="visibility:visible;"><embed allowScriptAccess="never" allowNetworking="internal" enableJSURL="false" enableHREF="false" saveEmbedTags="true" src="http://widget-17.slide.com/widgets/slideticker.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" quality="high" scale="noscale" salign="l" wmode="transparent" flashvars="cy=ms&il=1&channel=360287970191217175&site=widget-17.slide.com" width="400" height="300" name="flashticker" align="middle"/><div style="width:400px;text-align:left;"><a href="http://www.slide.com/pivot?id=360287970191217175&cy=ms&tt=17&at=1&map=1" target="_blank"><img src="http://widget-17.slide.com/p1/360287970191217175/ms_t017_v000_a001_f00/images/xslide1.gif" border="0" ismap="ismap" /></a> <a href="http://www.slide.com/pivot?id=360287970191217175&cy=ms&tt=17&at=1&map=2" target="_blank"><img src="http://widget-17.slide.com/p2/360287970191217175/ms_t017_v000_a001_f00/images/xslide2.gif" border="0" ismap="ismap" /></a></div></div> <div class="modmyprofileDOTcom"><a href="http://new.modmyprofile.com/map.php?id=566617"><img src="http://www.modmyprofile.com/worlds/566617.bmp" alt="Click to zoom in on my visitor map!" border=0><br>Click to zoom in on my visitor map!<br></a></div>

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