Research.
Healing.
Storykeeping.
You belong here.
Liberated Educators Lab is a research, storykeeping, and healing organization that partners with institutions and communities to preserve stories, generate insight, and create the conditions for more liberated futures.
MISSION
VISION
PHILOSOPHY
We advance liberated futures with Black educators and their communities through research, storykeeping, and healing-centered experiences.
A future where the stories, knowledge, and well-being of Black educators are preserved, valued, and used to shape more just institutions and thriving communities.
We believe that the stories we preserve shape the futures we build. Research helps us understand. Storykeeping ensures wisdom isn't lost. Healing creates the conditions for people and communities to imagine what comes next.
Storykeeping. Healing. Research.
We believe that the stories we preserve shape the futures we build. Research helps us understand. Storykeeping ensures wisdom isn't lost. Healing creates the conditions for people and communities to imagine what comes next.
OUR APPROACH
Our work brings together three interconnected practices: research, storykeeping, and healing. Each begins with listening. Each recognizes people as knowledge holders. Each creates space for lived experience to inform what comes next.
Our Work
Our projects take different forms, but they share one purpose: to ensure lived experience becomes lasting knowledge.
Storykeeping
We preserve what matters.
Stories are not simply content to be collected. They are entrusted to us.
Through oral history, podcasting, archival partnerships, writing, and public scholarship, we preserve lived experiences so that today’s wisdom remains available to future generations.
Healing & Joy Spaces
We create room for people to return to themselves.
People cannot continually be asked to give without spaces to pause, reconnect, reflect, and experience joy. We design healing-centered gatherings for organizations, conferences, and communities that recognize restoration as essential, not optional, to meaningful and sustainable work.
Research
We uncover knowledge.
Through qualitative research, oral histories, listening sessions, evaluation, and community-centered inquiry, we help organizations understand the people behind their policies, programs, and decisions.
Our research is designed to surface insight without separating people from the context of their lives.
The Exit Interview: A Podcast for Black Educators
An oral history podcast preserving the experiences of Black educators who have left traditional education but have not necessarily left the work of education.
Through honest conversations about identity, leadership, racial battle fatigue, joy, and life after leaving, the podcast documents a significant chapter in Black educational history.
The collection has been selected for preservation by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, becoming the first podcast collection in the Center’s history.
Who We Partner With
Our mission is rooted in Black educators and their communities. Our partnerships extend wherever stories, dignity, knowledge, and healing matter.
We work with:
Museums, libraries, archives, and cultural institutions
Foundations and philanthropic organizations
Universities and research centers
Healthcare and public health organizations
Nonprofits and community-based organizations
Government and public agencies
Schools, districts, and educational organizations
Arts and media organizations
Mission-driven companies and professional associations
We are especially aligned with partners who are ready to listen more deeply, preserve what matters, and build with not simply for the communities they serve.
What We Believe
We believe every community carries wisdom. We believe lived experience is a form of knowledge. Research should begin with listening. Stories should be preserved with care, context, and consent. People should not have to lose their dignity in order to contribute their gifts. Healing and joy belong inside the work not only after the work has caused harm.
And we believe the stories we save shape the futures we build.
Meet Dr. Asia Lyons
Educator. Researcher. Storykeeper. Founder.
For more than twenty years, I have worked alongside educators, families, communities, and institutions asking a central question:
What changes when people know their experiences matter?
That question has shaped my work as an educator, qualitative researcher, podcast host, facilitator, and founder of Liberated Educators Lab.
My research explores the lived experiences of Black educators, including racial battle fatigue, organizational harm, wellness, and the ways experiences inside educational systems travel home to families and communities.
My storykeeping work preserves the voices of Black educators through The Exit Interview, oral history, writing, archival partnerships, and public scholarship.
My healing and joy work creates spaces where people can put down what they have been carrying, reconnect with themselves and one another, and imagine what liberation could feel like in practice.
These are not separate areas of work.
They are different ways of protecting dignity, honoring knowledge, and making sure important stories are not lost.
Let’s Build Something That Lasts.
Maybe your organization requires research that captures the complexity of people’s lives. Perhaps your community has stories worth preserving. Maybe your people need a space to pause, reconnect, and see themselves beyond their productivity. Or perhaps you sense something significant is there, but you need a thoughtful partner to help uncover it. We would be honored to start by listening.
Trusted by educators, cultural institutions, universities, nonprofits, foundations, and community organizations.
Voices From The Lab
"Talking through it with someone who understands is healing. I was able to extract certain feelings and put them outside of myself, look at them and find a better place for them to live. I will be forever grateful to you Dr. Asia Lyons!"
-Sherinda Bryant, Podcast Guest
"It is a very powerful space of belonging. There are many layers of shared identity."
-Arvian Haper, Podcast & Pause Participant
“When I showed up the first month, I knew this was exactly what I needed.”
-Zelda Alao, Black Educator Wellness Cohort Participant
“I am always in awe of your interview skills and how you inspire me to reflect deeply on the work I love, Radical Self-Care and Warm Demander Teachers.”
-Dr. Franita Ware, Podcast & Pause Participant
“As always, it’s a joy to work with Dr. Lyons! She has been a major as we build a space for Black educators in DC.”
-Caroline Pryor, Non-profit Partner
