Rhonesha Blaché’s presence is formidable. She often dresses in vibrant hues—yellows and reds — mixing and matching symbolic colors of heritage and culture in a fetching street symphony, bold yet never overstated. : She moves effortlessly — both metaphorically and literally — between the streets of South Phoenix, where she grew up, and the wider world: Germany, Africa, the Caribbean, New York City, Tucson and beyond. She hardly carries herself like a doctor, more like a child’s sassy auntie — street-tested wisdom tempered by academic rigor. (Full discloser: I’ve admired this woman for some time. She is a godmother to our children, and a lifelong friend to my wife Maggie).  : Her intellectual grace is just that, it doesn’t reveal itself in any kind of the-smartest-in-the-room, ivory-towered arrogant way. How she rolls. Once you get her talking, eloquence matches effusiveness. Even a quick conversation might mix Dr. Seuss ideologies with African philosophies like Ubuntu and the interdependence of people. You’d note a selfless kindness about her, and a curiosity that’s both childlike and hyper-emotionally intelligent. It is an endless quest for discovery, and a need to feel life viscerally. A way of seeing, of absorbing the world through diverse perspectives, wrapped in wonder, and an optimistic wink at the miracle of it all. : Dr. Blaché has taught children and adults in public schools, private schools, non-profits, across the States, as well as in the Dominican Republic and Germany. She calls her young students her “babies.” She is the kind of teacher I wish I had growing up. This is the kind of teacher we could lose under Trump.  : Then there’s the twisted oak tree and the power of names. The oak represents community and resistance, once providing shade and serving as gathering places where enslaved people could meet or worship. An oak is also a witness tree, under which the first Southern reading of the Emancipation Proclamation took place. It was one of Blaché's favorite trees as a child (and still is), long before she understood its significance to her name and her life. She sees oak trees as a powerful force of life, shaped by nature’s twists. “Blaché means nature of the oak,” she says. “The trunk is like a woman’s body, twisted; the branches are her locks. Streets in New Orleans are lined with twisted oak trees, they are rich with history and spirituality. The trees are sacred. The last time I was in New Orleans, I saw spiritual offerings under the oaks.” : Blaché speaks with an ease that often links her sentences to laughter, her cadence carrying a slight melodic inflection of the Deep South — a linguistic fingerprint of history, culture, and resilience. It’s a patois that can’t be erased; she grew up in Phoenix, but her ancestral roots stretch through New Orleans, Haiti, Gullah Geechee heritage, and throughout Africa, Caribbean, the totality of the diaspora informs her work.    : She is always exploring — herself, the world, how things connect. Her research informs her practice; it shapes ho