Ayana Allen-Handy

Ayana Allen-Handy is a professor of urban education and director of The Justice-oriented Youth (JoY) Education Lab at Drexel University. The JoY Ed. Lab, which Allen-Handy founded in 2019, is a diverse, intergenerational collective of youth and community residents, faculty, undergraduate, and graduate research partners who center JoY through a humanizing, asset-forward, and critical-participatory action research approach in pursuit of educational, racial, and social justice. She is also interim chair of the department of policy, organization, and leadership in the School of Education at Drexel University. Prior to becoming a professor at Drexel, Allen-Handy was a first-grade teacher, a literacy specialist, and a school counselor in the Houston Independent School District.