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Meet Tina Strawn

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Tina Strawn.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Tina. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I was a fitness professional for over 14 years and started working out and teaching group fitness classes as a way to deal with my mother’s death from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2005, and as a way to take care of myself and find sanity in the midst of being an overwhelmed, body insecure working mother of three kids. My hobby of teaching classes turned into a career and I held many regional and corporate positions for companies such as LA Fitness, Lifetime Fitness (I was the Area Lead and Studio Manger for Life Time Athletic Atlanta in Sandy Springs from Aug 2015 – January 2017) and Anytime Fitness, where I oversaw hundreds of department heads, studio managers, yoga coordinators and teachers, group fitness instructors and indoor cycle instructors and Personal Trainers across Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia and Alabama.

While teaching fitness classes gave me a stage and a microphone where I taught thousands of people, it didn’t give me my voice. It was only after watching the videos of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile being killed by police in July 2016, that I found my voice. And it was only after reading Bryan Stevenson’s book, ‘Just Mercy,’ that helped me understand what to do with my voice. At the intersection of my fitness teaching and my activism, I created 3-day antiracism + yoga trips, called Legacy Trips (formerly known as Satya Yoga Trips) where participants visit the lynching memorial and the Legacy museum in Montgomery, Alabama, and we utilize the practice and philosophy of yoga as tools to dismantle racism, starting first within ourselves. I have led seven of these trips since December 2018, and myself and my team are currently working on opening registration for 10 Legacy Trips in 2021 that will now include additional locations such as Jamaica, Puerto Rico, New Orleans and DC.

I retired from my fitness career a little over a year ago so I now dedicate myself full time to being an antiracism facilitator, racial and social justice advocate and pleasure activist.

Has it been a smooth road?
This has definitely not been a smooth road. I transitioned out of a very successful fitness career where I went from being well-liked (as I was a fitness instructor known for my energy, passion and the way I motivated my students regardless of the format that I was teaching) to being very unpopular when I started speaking out against racism publicly. I learned that people liked me when I made them feel good and kept it all about ‘love and light.’ But they didn’t like me when I started speaking the truth publicly and began educating about racism and how we are all complicit in either upholding or dismantling white supremacy.

Please tell us more about your work, what you are currently focused on and most proud of.
I am the founder of Legacy Trips which are three day antiracism and yoga trips visiting the lynching memorial (The National Memorial for Peace and Justice) and the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration in Montgomery, Alabama. I am also the owner of the Speaking of Racism podcast. Currently I’m traveling internationally full time while working on her project, ‘Are We Free Yet?’ which is an exploration and examination of what it looks like and feels like to be free and to find home.

Legacy Trips are transformational, self-reflective trips where we explore how to live more liberated lives centering our joy and pleasure, while also unpacking our relationships to white supremacy, capitalism and the patriarchy through both a historical lens (which is why the places that we visit have historical significance) and a spiritual perspective (utilizing a variety of spiritual practices such as yoga, meditation, etc.).

I acquired the Speaking of Racism podcast in January 2020, which has over 50 episodes and over 200k downloads. We primarily feature Black and Brown guests who share about their anti-racism work in a variety of ways. Our most popular episode is called ‘A Response To Chelsea Handler’s Documentary on White Privilege,’ which has almost 20k downloads.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
For me, as a queer Black woman born in the US, anti-racism isn’t an industry; it’s my life. Anti-racism is about Black lives. And with the recent viral videos of anti-Black violence and murder at the hands of police, the state and others, there has been a rise in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and the fight against systemic and institutional racism. Nationwide, particularly since the May 2020 police killing of George Floyd, corporations are flocking to find not just Diversity, Inclusion and Equity trainers to hire, but specifically anti-racism trainers. So we are already seeing big shifts happening with regards to more people becoming aware of what racism is, how it works, how we participate in it and how we get involved to become not just allies but accomplices and co-conspirators to dismantle it.

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