WANDA Heads to Howard University

From Little WANDA to the Next Generation of Nutrition Leaders

At the 2026 USCAIH and Howard University health conference, WANDA will share what it has learned from building a nutrition leadership pipeline that stretches from childhood imagination to higher education and from Washington, D.C., to Northern Nigeria.

What happens when a little Black girl can see herself in the story of food before anyone tells her that agriculture, nutrition science, public health, or food technology are not for her?

And what happens when, years later, a young woman who has chosen one of those fields receives the financial support, mentorship, professional relationships, and sense of belonging she needs to keep going?

For WANDA, those questions belong in the same conversation. This October, Women Advancing Nutrition, Dietetics, and Agriculture will bring that conversation to Howard University when Founder and CEO Tambra Raye Stevenson, presents WANDA’s work at the 2026 U.S. Coalition for African Immigrant Health Inc. (USCAIH) and Howard University College of Nursing and Allied Health Sciences Conference, taking place October 2–4 at the Armour J. Blackburn University Center in Washington, D.C.

The conference, organized around the theme “Bridging Worlds: Advancing Health for the African Diaspora through Innovation, Partnership, and Policy,” will convene researchers, clinicians, students, public-health professionals, community leaders, and others working across African diaspora health. Organizers describe the gathering as an opportunity to connect rigorous, community-centered research with practical innovation, partnership, and policy change.

For WANDA, the invitation arrives at an important moment in our own journey. After more than a decade of asking how Black women and girls can receive greater coin, credit, credentials, and decision-making power within food, agriculture, nutrition, and health, we now have an opportunity to share how that vision is becoming a pipeline.

What If the Pipeline Begins With Imagination?

On Sunday, October 4, Stevenson will present “WANDA’s World: A Culturally Grounded Edutainment Model for Child Nutrition Literacy and Health Behavior Change in the Digital Age.” The 20-minute presentation is part of the conference track examining global, transnational, and local health connections.

WANDA’s World begins with an idea that is deceptively simple: Children need more than instructions about what they should eat. They need stories that help them understand where food comes from, how food connects to their bodies and families, and who they can become within the food system.

At the center is Little WANDA, a young Black girl whose food adventures introduce children to heritage foods, agriculture, nutrition, community leaders, and the relationship between food and health. WANDA’s emerging digital vision expands those adventures through culturally grounded stories, play, animation, games, family activities, and real-world learning designed especially for young children and the adults who care for them.

There is a larger purpose behind the play.

Children form ideas very early about who belongs in science, medicine, agriculture, technology, and leadership. If they encounter farmers, dietitians, food scientists, agricultural innovators, chefs, and community health leaders who reflect their families and cultures, food education can become more than another lesson about vegetables. It can become an invitation into possibility.

“WANDA’s World is ultimately about belonging,” Stevenson said. “Before a child can become a nutrition scientist, farmer, food entrepreneur, dietitian, or public-health leader, she first has to be able to imagine herself there. We want children to encounter food as something connected to their bodies and culture, but also as a world they have permission to help shape.”

That approach reflects WANDA’s larger belief that nutrition literacy is not simply the ability to identify which foods are considered healthy. It also involves culture, curiosity, family knowledge, media literacy, confidence, and an understanding that our food system is made by people and can therefore be changed by people.

Then Comes the Investment

If WANDA’s World asks children to imagine the possibilities, WANDA Scholars asks whether we are prepared to invest when those possibilities become ambitions.

On Saturday, October 3, Stevenson will present “Advancing Nutrition Equity Through Education: Impact of a Diaspora-Led Scholarship Program in Northern Nigeria.” The presentation appears within the conference track on global, transnational, and local health connections.

WANDA Scholars was created to help women pursuing education in nutrition, agriculture, food systems, and related disciplines move from aspiration toward professional leadership. The program has supported women in the United States and Nigeria through scholarships and a broader vision that includes mentorship, professional development, community, and opportunities to build leadership identity.

The Nigeria work carries particular significance. WANDA has supported students studying nutrition in Kano, where the first cohort reached graduation in 2026. Their journeys raise questions that matter far beyond a scholarship program: What does it take for women to enter and persist in nutrition and agriculture professions? What kinds of support matter alongside tuition? How does belonging influence professional identity? And what might change when African women are resourced not merely as recipients of health interventions, but as the nutrition professionals, researchers, educators, and leaders designing them?

Those are precisely the kinds of questions WANDA has been working to understand more rigorously.

When an Internship Becomes Part of the Evidence

A particularly meaningful part of the story is that WANDA’s own emerging workforce helped us study the workforce we are trying to build.

Walhana Titiaka, a WANDA policy and evaluation intern and Master of Public Policy student at American University’s School of Public Affairs, worked with WANDA to examine the Scholars program through an evaluation lens. American University’s MPP program explicitly trains students to formulate and evaluate public policy and communicate evidence to stakeholders, making the internship a practical bridge between graduate policy education and nonprofit program learning.

Her work included thinking through how WANDA should assess the program beyond the number of scholarships distributed. That meant considering students’ experiences, progression, mentorship, confidence, leadership development, professional identity, and the kinds of supports that might strengthen future cohorts. The evaluation process also included engagement with WANDA’s Nigeria team and tools for gathering scholar experiences and recommendations.

Rather than treating evaluation as something performed on a community after a program ends, WANDA has approached it as part of an ongoing learning process: What are students telling us? What assumptions need to change? Which supports should grow? What can a diaspora-led nonprofit learn from the women closest to the experience?

A proposed quote from Titiaka for the WANDA article is:

“Evaluating WANDA Scholars challenged me to look beyond the scholarship itself and ask what helps women persist, feel that they belong, and begin to see themselves as leaders in nutrition and food systems. As a public policy student, I have learned that numbers tell us part of the story, but listening to participants helps explain why a program works, where the gaps remain, and how we can design the next iteration more intentionally. What has been especially meaningful is seeing evaluation become a tool for learning with scholars rather than simply measuring them.” — Walhana Titiaka, WANDA Policy and Evaluation Intern and MPP Candidate, American University School of Public Affairs

That distinction matters because scholarships alone do not create a workforce. People do.

Financial support matters, but so do mentors, professional networks, opportunities to practice leadership, a sense of community, and the experience of being told, sometimes for the first time, that your knowledge and ambitions belong in the field.

A Pipeline Across the African Diaspora

It is fitting that WANDA will share these programs at a conference centered on African diaspora health.

Too often, conversations about Africa and health are still organized around what communities lack: providers, infrastructure, funding, data, access. Those deficits are real and deserve serious attention. But they can obscure another question: Who are we preparing to lead?

There is no sustainable health-equity strategy without human capital. Someone must become the nutritionist developing culturally relevant interventions. Someone must conduct the research. Someone must advise a ministry or health system. Someone must develop the technology, teach the next generation, run the community organization, build the food company, translate evidence for families, or become the trusted health professional people call when the information online no longer makes sense.

WANDA Scholars is one response to that challenge. WANDA’s World is another. One invests upstream in imagination. The other invests downstream in education and leadership.

Together, they allow WANDA to ask what might happen if the African diaspora built a more intentional pathway from the child discovering her possibilities to the woman equipped to lead.

“For me, WANDA’s World and WANDA Scholars are one story,” Stevenson said. “We cannot tell Black girls that they can become food sheroes and then disappear when they reach college. WANDA’s World helps a child imagine herself in the future of food and health; WANDA Scholars helps us put resources behind the women who are becoming that future. The bridge between inspiration and leadership is investment.”

Food Is Medicine Needs People, Too

Stevenson will also participate Saturday afternoon in the conference’s Food Is Medicine in African Immigrant Community panel alongside Dr. Oluwabunmi Ogungbe and Adeline Assani-Uva, moderated by Dr. Yvonne Commodore-Mensah of the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. The session runs from 3:45 to 4:30 p.m. as part of a larger Food Is Medicine and organizational showcase.

That placement underscores a point WANDA has increasingly made in national Food Is Medicine conversations: We can invest in produce prescriptions, medically tailored foods, clinical nutrition, and innovative delivery models, but somebody still has to do the work.

Food Is Medicine needs farmers. But it also needs...

• nutrition professionals and researchers.

• culturally knowledgeable dietitians.

• community health workers, doulas, educators, entrepreneurs, communicators, and trusted messengers.

• children who can someday imagine occupying those roles.

  
  

And it needs institutions willing to invest in the people who will carry the movement forward.

A food and health system cannot become more equitable if its leadership pipeline remains unequal.

Research Should Bring Something Home

The USCAIH and Howard University conference is intentionally built around that relationship between research and community. Its organizers describe Howard’s research mission as connected to social justice and emphasize community-centered work capable of addressing real-world health disparities. The three-day gathering includes research presentations, community-engagement sessions, clinical and population health discussions, digital-health work, workforce development, policy conversations, and networking across the African diaspora.

For WANDA, that makes the conference more than an opportunity to present.

It is a chance to listen.

What can WANDA’s World learn from researchers studying culturally tailored health education? How can WANDA Scholars become a stronger pathway into nutrition leadership? What might collaboration across African immigrant health organizations, universities, community institutions, and diaspora networks make possible that none could accomplish alone?

Those are the conversations WANDA hopes to carry home. Because the goal is not simply to stand behind a podium and describe what we built. The goal is to return with sharper questions, stronger relationships, and better ways to serve the women and children for whom it was built.

Join WANDA at Howard University

The 2026 USCAIH & Howard University College of Nursing and Allied Health Sciences Health Conference takes place October 2–4, 2026, at the Armour J. Blackburn University Center, 2397 6th Street NW, Washington, DC 20059. The program begins Friday evening and continues through Sunday afternoon with keynote presentations, research sessions, panels, workshops, networking, and community programming.

WANDA’s scheduled presentations include:

Saturday, October 3 | 11:35–11:55 a.m.

Advancing Nutrition Equity Through Education: Impact of a Diaspora-Led Scholarship Program in Northern Nigeria — Tambra Stevenson and Walhana Tikiaka.

Saturday, October 3 | 3:45–4:30 p.m.

Food Is Medicine in African Immigrant Community — featuring Tambra Stevenson, Dr. Oluwabunmi Ogungbe, and Adeline Assani-Uva.

Sunday, October 4 | 10:00–10:20 a.m.

WANDA’s World: A Culturally Grounded Edutainment Model for Child Nutrition Literacy and Health Behavior Change in the Digital Age — Tambra Stevenson.

Registration, ticket information, accessibility requests, and conference details are available through the official event page:

Register for the 2026 USCAIH & Howard University CNAHS Conference

There is a beautiful symmetry in bringing these two WANDA programs to the same conference. One asks us to imagine what becomes possible when an African-descended child grows up seeing herself reflected in stories about food, health, culture, and leadership. The other asks whether we will invest in her when she decides to turn that imagination into a profession.

We need both. A pipeline cannot begin at graduation. It begins the first time a girl can see herself in the future and continues when somebody decides her future is worth investing in.