Johanna Foster

Guest Expert

Johanna is co-facilitating the Body Talk: A Reproductive Justice Community of Practice Spring 2025

Johanna Foster is a licensed mental health counselor and educator.  Black and Afro-German-American, she was born and raised in New York City near Barnard in Harlem.  Her mother, white and German, and her father, Black and African-American, met doing movement work in Mississippi in the 1960s.  Her parent's stories about the Jim Crow South and Germany in the direct aftermath of the Holocaust deeply shaped her perspectives on health and healing.  They taught her about the hope, joy, and love that came from doing movement work.  They also taught her about the profound grief, damage, disconnection, and shame that arise from standing idly by as others are targeted by violence and oppression.

She is the co-founder of a small private practice, Our Kitchen Table, LLC.  She also teaches at New York University in the same program where she attained her Masters in Counseling for Mental Health and Wellness.

Johanna currently shares her time between New York City and Berlin, Germany.  She is an avid textile lover and fiber artist.  As the descendant of ancestors who were forced to raise and harvest cotton, she never looks at a garment without wondering whose hands have produced it.  When she sees a beloved quilt or piece of lace, she is reminded of the ways working-class people across generations have protected and provided for each other.