Dr. Luella Toni Lewis pursued a career in social justice through medicine and earned her Bachelor’s Degree and Medical Doctorate from Georgetown University. From 2010 to 2016, Dr. Lewis served as Chair of the 1.1 million member labor organization SEIU Healthcare where she helped to lead and craft education, preparation, and response to the 2014 – 2016 Ebola epidemic. Prior to her departure in 2017, Dr. Lewis led in many areas including ACA implementation and health system transformation, global health, millennial engagement, racial justice, disaster response, and political strategy.
In 2017, Dr. Lewis Co-Founded the Health Equity Cypher, a collective of global and national experts devoted to health equity and committed to improving the conditions of America’s most vulnerable, with a special emphasis on the Black community, through policy and clinical and leadership strategies designed to target social systems rooted in institutional racism and classism. In 2018, Dr. Lewis founded Liberation Health Strategies to focus on community, national, and global holistic strategies for health justice. She currently serves on various boards and leadership committees of health and social justice organizations, is a licensed Family Physician and Geriatrician,and is internationally credentialed in Kemetic Yoga — an inclusive and afrocentric practice–and Femme!–a multisensory fusion of dance, motion, and meditation for self-care, release, and empowerment. Dr. Lewis is originally from Mounds (pop. 900), a rural city in southern Illinois, and currently resides in the Bed-Stuy Neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY.