Founders

Erika Philip lives in Washington DC, where she serves as the founder and Executive Director of Azania Counseling and Azania International, with her husband of 23 years and three teenage children.  She recently moved from Miami where she worked for 15 years in an Afro-Caribbean urban neighborhood. For over two decades, she has devoted her life to domestic and international places with high levels of poverty, including Rwanda, Uganda, and Ethiopia, doing community organizing, consulting, training, therapeutic and relief work.  She is a faith-based community organizer and cross-cultural, trauma therapist. 

Erika has earned her bachelor's degree in International Studies and her graduate degree in Mental Health Counseling.  She has extensive experience with survivors of sexual abuse and trafficking and refugees with complex trauma from across the globe.  The modalities that inform her therapeutic practices are rooted in a community approach; working with family systems, systemic and communal trauma, and individual trauma using EMDR.  She is passionate about making mental health equitable to underserved communities.