About Us

Keiona Gorham

Founder & CEO

Keiona Gorham brings extensive expertise in psychology, nonprofit management, and firsthand experience as a Black woman navigating professional spaces to her work at the BFA Institute. Her professional history includes over 20 years of coaching and mentoring adults, youth, and children through various organizations. With a graduate degree in Nonprofit Management from Grace College and an undergraduate degree in Psychology from Nyack College, Keiona combines personal experience, professional training, and education to create avenues for lasting change.

The BFA Institute Way

As a passionate and structured leader, Keiona has worked with individuals through one-on-one sessions, small groups, workshops, and retreats, where she brings enlightenment, encouragement, and accountability to each session. She has served in executive leadership positions in nonprofits and has a demonstrated commitment to addressing workplace racial trauma and microaggressions based on her own experiences and those of other marginalized people in the workplace.

Our Unique Tools Include:

  • Treasure Hunting: Finding the good in the struggles of life

  • Verbal Reformation: Mindfulness of word usage in self-evaluation and circumstances

  • Vision-Casting: Personal vision, mission, and core values statement formation

  • Trauma-Informed Communication: Practices that recognize and mitigate impacts of systemic oppression

By partnering with the BFA Institute, your organization is committing to a transformative journey. We are not just aiming for incremental improvements but for a fundamental reimagining of your organizational culture and practices. This process will challenge you to confront uncomfortable truths, unlearn harmful patterns, and actively cultivate an environment that is not only trauma-informed and culturally inclusive but explicitly antiracist and liberatory. Through this work, we aim to contribute to the broader societal movement towards justice and equity, starting within our professional community.

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Interviews featuring Keiona Gorham

Seed & Signal: Futures Conversations

“Keiona envisions a revival of self-worth, spirit, friendship, family, and community—a collective return to our inherent value, simply because we exist.”

read full interview

Voyage Baltimore: Community Highlights

“This innovative organization has developed a comprehensive approach that interweaves trauma-informed practices and liberation-based community building to create lasting, equitable change within organizations and institutions.

read full interview

What People Are Saying

“Keiona has encouraged and uplifted me with her mentorship when I was personally in a hopeless state of mind. She is very kind hearted, caring and tells it how it is, which I believe we all need someone who will keep it honest and real with you when your in a negative mind set.”

— Alexys B.

“The owner of this page has always inspired me to do my best in any decision I wanted she always advised me to think it through and analyze it before jumping into it. She shares the same issues any women would go through young or old. She is truly legit, absolutely honest, and truly beautifully inspirational”

— Tionne H.

“She has helped me through some of the most difficult times in my life! She helped me become the woman mother and professional I am today and I credit much of my success to her talk sessions!”

— Amanda B.

“Keiona has such a discerning heart, mind, and soul! She is aligned with all things good! She seeks to help others, and that she does effortlessly. Keiona is a great mentor and I look up to her in many, many ways. If you are looking for someone who is gentle but stern and assertive but affirming Keiona is your person!”

— Alex W.

The BFA Institute specializes in providing trauma-informed, inclusive services for all professionals and organizations who are centering antiracism and anti-oppression in their work. Services include individual life coaching, leadership cultivation for professionals from all sectors, and nonprofit consultation.