Biography 

Rachel Bryant, MA, is an educator, leader, and healer with more than two decades of experience in public and community mental health. She serves as Vice President, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), where she has helped teach, mentor, and launch the careers of hundreds of emerging mental health clinicians from diverse backgrounds. With a pedagogical and therapeutic orientation in Black, Indigenous, and Liberation Praxis, Rachel is dedicated to working alongside others to heal the soul wounds of poverty, violence, and addiction in our communities.

After receiving her Masters of Counseling Psychology degree with a concentration in Community Mental Health from CIIS, Rachel became an adjunct instructor in the Masters of Counseling Psychology and Undergraduate Studies programs at her alma mater. From 2009 to 2017, she was the Director of the Mental Health Services Act Project at CIIS, a program funded by the City and County of San Francisco to recruit and retain graduate students underrepresented in the mental health workforce. In this role, Rachel was instrumental in seeding the Wellness, Resiliency, and Recovery model throughout the institution’s pedagogical framework. Skilled in group facilitation, strategic planning, program development, fundraising, and evaluation, Rachel has experience winning and managing six- and seven-figure grants from state, county, and private foundation partners. She has administered behavioral health services and programming at the Alameda County Public Health Department and the Mental Health Association of San Francisco, where she championed the peer provider model of behavioral healthcare.

With roots in South Berkeley and East Oakland and a background in community-based radio broadcasting, Rachel self-identifies as Blaxican and believes in the innate wisdom and intelligence of all people to heal themselves and others. She serves as a board member of the Rafiki Coalition for Health and Wellness, which provides culturally responsive health and wellness services to San Francisco’s Black communities, and as a Core Member of the Healing Clinic Collective, which promotes ancestral ways of healing and healthcare for traumatized populations in the Bay Area and beyond

Education 

MA, Counseling Psychology, Community Mental Health, California Institute of Integral Studies 

BA, Mass Communication, Broadcast Journalism, California State University, East Bay

Board Member, Rafiki Coalition, San Francisco, CA

Core Member, Healing Clinic Collective, Oakland, CA