Joyful Clemantine Wamariya

Faith & Spirituality International Human Rights Africa Expertise BIPOC Corporate Social Responsibility Mindfulness Personal Narrative Refugees

About this Speaker

Storyteller, Author and Social Entrepreneur

Joyful Clemantine is a social entrepreneur, connector, an internationally renowned speaker, and a New York Times Bestselling Author. Her memoir THE GIRL WHO SMILED BEADS debuted with Crown Publishing in April 2018, and since has been published in seven languages. Joyful is currently the founder of 10Houses, a private network dedicated to cultivating entrepreneurship and equity, and a co-founder and connector of THINGY, an online platform whose mission is to capture, organize, and share creative ways of being to foster belonging.

Joyful lives to connect communities and transform individualistic perspectives into balanced structures of exchange and interaction. She catalyzes development personally, locally, and globally by centering the mind, body and spirit as a site for personal and communal growth.

Joyful provides practical, emotional and mental strategies to rewire habits and make decisions that serve equity in self, the home, the community and the workplace.

Informed by her personal experiences growing up in nine different countries, mostly in war torn regions across central and east Africa, Joyful emboldens communities to bring awareness to divisive labels and ideology embedded in oppressive identities based on class, race, and gender. She invites everyone to bring awareness and action back to self: Who are we without words? Who are we without labels?

Joyful received her BA in Comparative Literature from Yale University with a focus in African and Women’s Studies in 2014.