Sierra M. Roach-Coye

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT SIERRA M. ROACH-COYE

I am a doctoral candidate at the University of Denver’s Graduate School of Social Work, where my scholarship illuminates the intersection of environmental racism, health equity, and psychological well-being within the Black community. As an intersectional environmental justice abolitionist, I use culturally grounded mixed methods and community-engaged research approaches to center Black voices and document the profound psychological toll of environmental racism. I believe that knowledge produced by and with communities is the most transformative kind — and I design my research accordingly. I identify professionally as a scholar-clinician: someone who refuses to separate the intellectual from the embodied, the theoretical from the relational. In my clinical practice, I weave in alternative ways of knowing, somatic awareness, and culturally grounded frameworks. I am cross-licensed in Colorado and Maryland and have worked with individuals across the lifespan — though my deepest passion lies in supporting adolescents, young adults, and families through life’s most challenging transitions. Culturally responsive care for people of the global majority is not an add-on to my practice; it is the foundation. In higher education, I bring extensive experience as an academic advisor and an undergraduate curriculum evaluator. I am deeply committed to universal design for learning and to integrating critical, anti-oppressive pedagogies into every classroom I enter. I believe education is a site of liberation — and I teach accordingly. I am also the founder of Olamina Wellness Collective, a community wellness space rooted in the same values that ground my scholarship and clinical work: restoration, liberation, and community care that honors the whole person. Olamina is the culmination of a vision of what wellness can look like when built by and for communities that have historically been excluded from it. I am always open to collaboration — research partnerships, speaking engagements, clinical consultation, curriculum development, and community wellness initiatives. If my work resonates, I would love to connect.