Dr. Peyi Soyinka-Airewele, continued

Peyi was the first black woman to be tenured at Ithaca College, New York, and later, the first to be promoted to full Professor, and much of her work is dedicated to making rights and protections accessible and attainable to vulnerable individuals and groups through advocacy, emergency support, and other strategies that are sensitive to issues of culture, socioeconomic class, nationality status, gender, faith, and the myriad other factors that affect whether people are treated in a just and equitable manner.Peyi currently serves as President of the African Women’s Initiative of Ithaca (AWI), the Director of the Verity Foundation, and the Convener of the Verity Women’s Network. These platforms provide support and solidarity for participants in the United States and internationally. Peyi also hosts the bi-monthly Verity women’s gatherings where women of faith from across the world meet virtually to dive deeply into subjects that affect them and share their experience, expertise, and mutual support in a lively, safe, transgenerational, and diverse space. She is a member of the Feminist-Womanifesto, an umbrella group comprising almost 400 organizations advancing women’s rights and well-being overseas, an ordained minister with Cornerstone Fellowship, and a former co-vice president of the Ithaca City of Asylum.

In these capacities, Peyi supports community members who feel vulnerable and marginalized as they struggle through court appearances, school disciplinary processes, work discrimination situations, and the aftermath of domestic violence as victims seek emergency shelter, career retraining, job placement assistance, or access to legal services. She has worked to empower women immigrants who tend to be rendered invisible even as they deal with interlocking oppressions of racism, discrimination, and silencing.

Peyi served for many years as an ambassador for Stephen’s Children’s Home, a center for over 400 children orphaned by the Boko Haram terrorist assaults in Nigeria. Sadly, after decades of providing protection for extremely vulnerable children, the home was forced to shut down amidst the severe staffing losses of the devastating covid crisis as the children’s welfare could no longer be guaranteed. Peyi is also involved in providing access to transformative development for environmental sustainability in low-income communities and works with an international interdisciplinary collaborative committed to those goals.