Dr. Janice Marie Collins Bio

Dr. Collins is a multi-national award-winning professional journalist and documentarian, producer, director, and writer, editor, cinematographer and reporter with more than 35 years of experience in the media industry. She is also an international and national award-winning professor, scholar, researcher of mixed methodology and creative with 20 years of experience on the university level.

Throughout her career, she’s won multiple Emmy, Best of Gannett, Associated Press, NABJ, AABJ and other esteemed awards for writing, producing, reporting, cinematography, directing and editing. She directed, produced, wrote, edited, narrated, and filmed the award-winning webseries and television documentary, A Taste of Gullah, that won Best Documentary at the International Garifuna film Festival Award in Venice, California. Over 10 million viewers have watched her documentary, aired regionally, every February, on PBS over the past 4 years.

She researched, directed, wrote, edited, narrated, filmed and produced an award winning, comprehensive (5 hours), autoethnography series called, “Journey to My Mother’s Land: Extending the Gate’s Effect into Africa,” that chronicles her immersion-trip back to her maternal ancestral land of Sierra Leone, West Africa and the Mende tribe. This very unique documentary was picked up by the Nigerian Television Authority, the largest broadcast network in Africa with an audience penetration in the millions in the U.S. , U.K., Canada and all of Africa. Her documentary series was selected for the 4th Dimension Independent Film Festival 2021 and awarded first place in the cinematography category and screened in Paradiso Ubud, Bali, Indonesia. It was also selected for the Accolade Global Film Festival 2021 in La Jolla, California and won Best Director. Her last trip to Africa (Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone) was captured and posted as part of an educational/journalism digital project publication.

She created a national award winning website of inclusion called HearMyVoiceOnline.com and is the host of the radio/podcast program called “Theoretical Tea and Company,” and has written three books, 250 Years and Still a Slave which the prominent race educator and expert Jane Elliott calls “a great read and should be in every classroom,” a teacher’s manual on DEIB efforts in learning spaces called Teaching without Borders, and a motivational and emotionally-healing book publication on surviving beyond strokes titled, Riding the Rainbow Through the Storms.

She is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the nonprofit, World Changers Media International Foundation for world changing storytelling and a consulting business for Full Inclusion called, ACEING IT Consulting, LLC. In both publications, readers are introduced to her national award-winning praxis, organizational design and pedagogy for Full Inclusion and Empowerment that she created and developed over sixteen years called, Active Centralized Empowerment.

From integrating her award-winning critical pedagogy called Active Centralized Empowerment into classrooms over the last 20 years to ensure each human being, who happens to be a student, has an active voice and is included, to working with college students on humanitarian endeavors in Sierra Leone and other parts of the world, to developing DEIB initiatives in STEAM and community-based organizations as well as grant writing and awards, to working with Nonprofits and documentarians from over 162 countries on humanitarian efforts and Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations on storytelling and inclusive practices at UnLeash 2019! In Shenzhen, China, to visiting very special and brave children living in an Internally Displaced People’s Camp (IDP) to spread hope and the importance of storytelling, to working with special organizations with humanitarian efforts to bring Christmas to remote villages, to a cooking podcast she does called Seasoned with Love, her humanitarian efforts run deep and are expansive.

Collins works as a Voiceover Talent, Motivational Speaker, Life Coach, Teaching Consultant/Expert, Diversity, Equity, Belonging and Inclusion Expert, and national and international Media Expert, Consultant & Practitioner. In the past year, she has assisted organizations with grant writing and being selected for awards to the sum of over 4 million dollars. As Lead Researcher of Mixed Methodology for many of these organizations, these endeavors have focused on STEM/STEAM/ Community Re-engagement, College Success programs, Leadership, DEIB, Storytelling, Engineering and Math.

In all that she does, Janice works to bring out the best in people and works to make the world more informed, more educated, kinder and gentler to one another as a Global family. In proper fashion, she was just selected as GAIA INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCE 2023 HUMANITY LEADER TOP PICKS. Gaia International Alliance is a Foundation that was created to recognize top leaders and experts in the field of Humanity, Transformation, Spirituality and all aspects of the Healing Arts. As a practicing Humanitarian and Abolitionist, she works to help others reach Optimal Performance and Results with her research and specializations focusing mainly on processes of De-Marginalization of individuals, media content, community, learning, living and working environments. Collins is also a Kopenhaver Fellow and was selected to participate at a Poynter Diverse Voices workshop, a highly competitive and prestigious opportunity.

A military brat and from a huge, non-judgmental, Christian family of 8, she learned to be of service for the best in humanity at an early age. She grew up understanding and practicing: compassion, empathy, effective leadership, effective collaboration, diversity, equity, belonging and inclusion. She has always believed that each person is born with a special gift, something special that they were born with that only they can give to the world. One of her gifts is the ability to see a person’s heart and their special gift. She loves to love others and to see people reach their highest potential, fulfillment, and happiness. In this spirit, she is proud to be one of the original members of FEMDAC Transnational.

Janice received a B.A. in Mass Communications-specializing in Communication/Rhetoric and a certificate in Women’s Studies and was a standout student-athlete and inductee in the ACC Legends Hall of Fame representing Women’s Basketball at Wake Forest University. She received a M.S. in Journalism-specializing in Broadcast Journalism from E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University and a Ph.D. in Mass Communications specializing in Leadership Development, Demarginalization, Pedagogy and an Associate Certification in Women’s Studies from the College of Communication at Ohio University. She has taught at Hampton University, Ohio University, Eastern University and the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.