About Us
About The Neo Project
The Okavango Delta in Botswana
Ann Helene Neo McBride (She/Hers) was born in Johannesburg, South Africa while her parents were living and working in Botswana. She is the product of a biracial marriage, her father white and from England and her mother Black and from America. Ann was given the Setswana name Neo (which means to “give/gift”) by her Setswana God parents.
Ann has used the Setswana language for this work to honor the giving intentions of her African name and to highlight the significance of communication through naming in the Tswana culture. By its essence The Neo Project Consultancy is a “gift project” both for her and for those that wish to meaningfully engage with this work.
The intention of The Neo Project is to provide not only advisory services in DEIJ but to facilitate active spaces for holding change, to cultivate and mediate psychological care as we work to develop anti-racist movements/organizations/gatherings as reparations from historical harm for individual and community-based liberation.
This work is a culmination of Ann’s academic studies in human behavior, psychology, philosophy, and her lived experience as a mother, bi-racial woman, and dual citizen with an identity rooted in cross-cultural realities and dynamics. Through this project she will continue to intentionally investigate the mechanics of what it means to be human, the causalities of behavior and the structures of historically oppressive systems that intersect with our relationship to self, our professions, our artistic endeavors, and our collective futuristic imagination.
About Ann
Artist- Elizabeth Hannah Neo McBride
Our Creator, Digital Media. (IB. HL Art 2020)
Instagram: @liz.art.mcbride
Ann N.H. McBride (She/Hers) is a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice Consultant with an expansive network of collaborators, including executive leadership, community activators, curators and scholars, activists, and philanthropists.
She fosters social justice and implements strategies for meaningful and lasting change by developing cooperative work environments with organizations of all sizes and stages of development, from conception and newly developed to undergoing transformation to well-established and thriving.
With an academic background in Behavioral Science and Marriage & Family Therapy, she is deeply committed to advocating for the community’s most vulnerable members and eliminating the broad systemic barriers that would give them opportunities to grow and thrive.
Military family life has played a pivotal role in McBride’s professional development. Married for 23 years, she and retired Lt. Colonel Sean McBride have raised three children during active service and four year-long deployments with the United States Army. Experience with navigating multiple cross-country moves, family separation, war-related trauma, and multilayered parenting has translated through her work as empathy, transitory resilience, and creative flexibility.
An arts and cultural management professional, McBride has worked with I.P. Standback Museum, Orangeburg Fine Arts Center, NBC News, Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina Arts Commission, South Carolina Governor’s Awards for the Arts, Bullets & Bandaids and collaborating with independent artists in the American South.
During her tenure at the Arts Commission, she served as the inaugural DEI Committee Chair, and this was the impetus for her further study at Tufts University’s Diversity Equity Inclusion and Justice Leadership Department, where she received her training and certification. She continues her work at the intersection of art, human rights, and psychological analysis and seeks to provide collaborative leadership, creative inquiry, and spiritual liberatory exploration.
Education
Diversity Equity Inclusion and Justice Leadership (DEIJ-L) Certification
May 2023 | Tufts University
Master of Science in Behavioral Science - concentration in Marriage & Family Therapy (LMFT)
May 2002 | Cameron University
Bachelor of Science in Psychology
May 1998 | College of Charleston
Ann’s Diversity Statement & Philosophy
Artist - Maya Smith, Sang, Colored Pencil, 12X19,
Jazz performance with Cécile McLorin Salvant an artist's response to Bearden.
Maya Smith (mayatheartist.com)
Email Maya Smith at maya@mayatheartist.com for more information.
I am committed to a future in which “transformative justice, the work of addressing harm at the root, outside the mechanisms of the state, so that we can grow into right relationship with each other” (Brown, 2020, p.5) is the scaffolding to our communal journey towards healing and connection.
My maternal energy has informed my understanding of this transformative justice, and it must be entrenched with the restoration, protection, and profound love for Black, Queer, and Indigenous bodies. Unconditional love and truth for our most marginalized and harmed folx will be the evolutionary womb we need to offer our humanity.
I believe it is important to not blame, shame or reject individuals as we critique harmful systems. We must instead bring voice to naming harm, thoughtful inquiry into analyzing intentions, and clarify the truths of damaging impact. We must move the energy of righteous racial anger through and out of our bodies into action - seeking and crafting apologies that we all need to hear and give.
I believe that Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice (DEIJ) work is essential labor, but it often leads us through the darkest heart of this country’s history. This reckoning with our past and the systems of harm we still navigate needs to be balanced by the ability to celebrate and find joy in our hope for a more just future.
I see hope in our capacity for shared humanity where everyone can find belonging and care. This should be rooted in our collective vibrant cultures, self-identities, and encouraging intergenerational relationships. I believe that the art sector, in which I have worked for years, can be our space to heal, to unleash joyfulness and collapse for rest into shared expression.
Creativity is necessary in all conditions. If scientists can’t tap into their creative thinking and foster their imagination; how can they search for what is possible? and what is experimentation but creative inquiry?
Diverse arts education and cultural experiences rooted in DEIJ is critical if we wish to be abolitionists from the structures of white supremacy and intergenerational trauma.
We are the children of our collective human story, and the future is ours to weave with multidimensional reparations. I believe artistic expression will be our indigenous guide to justice.
We must have advocates for this in all aspects of society. I am committed to this as community service and personal liberation.
Source: Brown, Adrienne Maree. (2020). We will not cancel us: Breaking the cycle of harm. AK Press.