Meet Teresa Kay-Aba Kennedy

My mission is to unleash innate potential and raise human consciousness.

Award-Winner Across Disciplines

Received over 20 awards as an entrepreneur, advocate and author ranging from Emerging Entrepreneur by the Social Venture Network and National Power Award from the American Heart Association to the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award for her book, Shining Bright.

Extended Bio

Teresa Kay-Aba Kennedy, Ph.D., MBA, RYT, CPC is a global thought leader and executive educator at the forefront of integrating neuroscience and AI to accelerate leadership development and personal growth. Creator of Embodied Success® and the IAmPowerLiving.com empowerment platform, she is redefining how to lead, live and thrive from the inside out with programs that focus on communication, innovation, peak performance, wellness, and resilience.

A Harvard Business School-trained strategist, she combines her proprietary frameworks with embodied exercises, real-world case studies, industry data, AI tools, and more to deliver engaging and impactful experiences that lead to measurable results. As a Certified Professional Coach from the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC), she has an interactive and informed style. She has worked with global organizations including MetLife, PwC, Bloomberg Media, Deloitte, QVC, Estée Lauder, Macy’s Corporate, Cleveland Clinic, and the National Institutes of Health. Former VP at MTV Networks and founder of VH1 Online and VH1@Work Radio at the beginning of the commercial Internet, she is an innovator who understands the journey of the high-performing professional and has personally experienced it all… from success to near death to full-system transformation. After almost dying in 1997, she left her corporate career and founded the first yoga studio in Harlem, diving deeply into what made the human body, brain, and spirit thrive. Her story has inspired people around the world from Slovenia to Dubai. Called “smart with a heart,” she has been a moderator at the United Nations, and was selected as a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. She has participated in exclusive Forums with heads of state, multinational CEOs and other leaders in Brazil, China, India, Jordan, Morocco, Mexico, Myanmar, South Africa, Tanzania and Switzerland, including being a Discussion Leader for the Annual Meeting in Davos. She has received over 20 awards across various disciplines from the Women Who Dare To Be Different Award presented by Congressman Edolphus Town’s and The Women’s Caucus (2008) to the prestigious IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award (2018) for her book, Shining Bright. Her work has been featured in various media, such as CNN, NBC, Hallmark TV, The New York Times, ARD TV in Germany, El Mercurio in Chile, Tokyo FM in Japan, and Oprah’s book, Live Your Best Life!

She is seasoned at making contemplative practices accessible for a professional audience with deep credibility in both the business and yoga/wellness worlds. Considered a mind-body expert, she has over 1,000 hours of teacher training in yoga and mindfulness including a comprehensive understanding of nervous system regulation which she teaches in her State Shifting course and as a part of Embodied Success®. She is a National Spokesperson for the American Heart Association, served six years on the Board of Yoga Alliance (including Chair and Interim CEO) setting standards for yoga teaching in the U.S., and was one of the first African Americans featured on the cover of Yoga Journal. She has moderated programs at Yoga Journal Conferences across the country with a range of notable yoga teachers and has presented on the mind-body connection to entities like the National Institutes of Health and Yoga Research Society. In addition, she has led mind-body programs for physicians and staff at hospitals like Mount Sinai and King’s County Hospital, as well as organizations like the Association of Black Cardiologists and Student National Medical Association. She has also led immersive yoga-based experiences, including teaching yoga to global leaders on a private section of The Great Wall of China and being a headliner for the XYoga Dubai Festival.  She started playing with yoga at four years old watching her mother practice, and is an advanced student of Sri Dharma Mittra. Her initial teacher training was at Integral Yoga Institute and she participated in one of the last satsang gatherings (i.e., audience with a master) with Sri Swami Satchidananda (whose teachings inspired Dr. Dean Ornish’s pioneering work on reversing heart disease). As biographer and protégé of the late yoga master Tao Porchon-Lynch, she spent a decade traveling the globe with Tao curating 66 one-of-a-kind events at places like the Pentagon and the Age of Happiness Festival in Montenegro, and working with notables such as Sadhguru and Dr. Deepak Chopra. She has written six books, including Tao’s award-winning autobiography, Dancing Light: The Spiritual Side of Being Through the Eyes of a Modern Yoga Master (2015) and award-winning gift book, Shining Bright: Images and Quotes to Inspire Optimism, Gratitude & Belief In Your Limitless Potential (2017).

In 2016, she created Elder Dignity to advocate for elder justice and reform in the U.S. guardianship system after witnessing her aunt, Dr. Lillie Sykes White, being exploited by a predatory guardianship in Florida. She has spoken widely on guardianship reform, such as at World Elder Abuse Awareness Day in D.C., the Florida Senate Judiciary Committee, the Progressive Forum, and the Coalition of 100 Black Women, as well as produced three social impact videos, The Deception of Protection (2019), Silent Torture: Trafficking Through Guardianship (2020) and Let America Be America Again (2022).  She has served as moderator for the Americans Against Abusive Probate Guardianship Summit, #FreeBritney Symposium, and is an advisor for the #FreePeterMax campaign.  In 2022, she testified for the New York Senate Guardianship Roundtable, and in 2023, she submitted a written statement to the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging.  She wrote Is Elder Guardianship A New Form Of Human Trafficking? for The Huffington Post, and They Took My Aunt, Then Spent Her Money for Sisters From AARP. She has also provided commentary on guardianships in various media such as ABC Action News (FL), Sky News, and Black Enterprise’s Beyond The Hype with Alfred Edmond. She understands the caregiver’s journey. She helped her mother take care of her father for eight years at home when he was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. She was also caregiver for her sister, Sheila Kennedy Bryant, when she was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer and subsequently passed away at the age of 59.

Although she is American, Terri was born in Ghana, started school in Australia and studied in Italy. She skipped two grades of school and graduated high school at age sixteen. Her parents – the late playwright/professor Dr. James Scott Kennedy and actress/journalist/entrepreneur Janie Sykes-Kennedy – were pioneers in cross-cultural communications and learning through the arts. For more than five decades, they worked on five continents training leaders and introducing positive concepts of Black people through theatre, television, radio, journalism, academia and the pulpit. In the 1950’s, they owned and operated one of the first multicultural theatre companies in New York City. In the early 1960’s, as her father taught at Brooklyn College, her mother operated ID: Inner Dignity in Brooklyn, New York, a learning center focused on promoting self-esteem in girls. In the late 1960’s, they lived in Ghana working at the University of Ghana.  They also produced for the 1966 First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal, and the First Pan African Cultural Festival in Algiers, Algeria in 1969.  In the 1970’s, they were invited by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam of Australia to live in Adelaide and introduce new concepts of people – African American and African — to that continent. They were also asked to produce for the Papau, New Guinea Independence Arts Festival in 1973.  In 2010, her mother was invited by President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal to speak at the Third World Festival of Black Arts in Dakar and give a historical perspective as a cultural pioneer.  The entire family was hosted by the President.  Watch the video Return to Senegal. Terri’s writing and media savvy was refined by her mother, who ran a global marketing consulting firm in the 1980’s and 1990’s and is also a highly-respected Columbia University-trained journalist.

Terri was privileged to grow up around icons like Michael Jackson, Muhammad Ali and Smokey Robinson, and have celebrities in her own family including film and TV stars Leon Isaac Kennedy and Jayne Kennedy Overton.  Her aunt, Adrienne Kennedy, is the Obie Award winning playwright who was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame and made her Broadway debut at the age of 91 in 2022 with “Ohio State Murders,” directed by Tony winner, Kenny Leon, and starring another Tony winner, Audra McDonald. Education, public service and a commitment to excellence have been a family tradition which goes back to Terri’s great grandmother, Mary Atkins, who graduated from Knoxville College in the mid-1800’s; her great uncle, Dr. James Atkins, was a member of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Black Cabinet,” advising on education; her uncle, Dr. Joseph C. Kennedy, was co-founder and International Director of Africare, and worked with Sargent Shriver to start the Peace Corps serving as deputy director for Africa, director in Sierra Leone, and regional director for East Asia and the Pacific Region; and her aunt, Dr. Lillian Kennedy Beam, was for 18 years a visionary builder and former Vice Chancellor of the United States International University Africa in Kenya. Another aunt, Mary Kennedy Carter, built schools in Uganda as part of Columbia University’s Teachers for East Africa. Learn more about Terri’s family at The Kennedy Archives.

A lifelong learner, Terri has degrees in Sociology, Studio Art, Business and World Religions, and has done Executive Education in Strategies for Sustainability at Stanford University, and Global Leadership & Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Yale University Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, and Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. To supplement her world-class education, she learned directly from a master – her father. In addition to being a professor of Theatre Arts, he was a pioneer in Executive Leadership Training.  Known as “Mr. Speech,” he started training executives at IBM and other corporations in the 1950’s integrating specialized breathing, vocal and embodiment tools.  He was also the vocal coach to notables like tennis great Althea Gibson. Terri’s empowerment work uses many of his proven principles, frameworks and techniques, along with her own signature style of coaching, inspiration and whole approach to success in business and life.

Everything Terri does in business, wellness and advocacy leverages her superpower: communication, whether it’s writing, speaking, moderating, teaching or producing.