Breaking the Silence: Redefining Expertise for Black Liberation and Just Transition

By Tanya Lord, PhD, MPH
Soft-Spoken Advocate, Ally, and Associate Director of the Black Liberation & Just Transition Institute

In 1999, my son Noah died from medical errors following a routine tonsillectomy. As my grief shifted, sometimes softening and sometimes intensifying, I found myself consumed not just by how he died, but by how I was treated as his mother. I was young, he was our first child, and I knew something was wrong. Yet despite being the one constant presence at his side, the person who spent every moment with him after surgery, I was the one least heard. My voice was silenced, and it caused Noah’s death. 

As time passed, we began to build a life around Noah’s memory and not his life. I found that I had something to say. Something to say to all the medical professionals who only saw me as an overly concerned mother, not someone with expertise they did not have. I had something to say, and I wanted them to listen. So, I went to school. I earned a master’s degree, then a PhD. I learned everything I could about healthcare quality, safety, and improvement. I joined research teams, led projects, and worked tirelessly to reach what I thought was my ultimate goal: becoming “one of them,” an expert they would listen to.

And they did. I spoke about engaging patients and families, about truly listening to their stories because within those stories lies the wisdom clinicians need. And they listened. They learned. Slowly, systems began to change.

But here is the truth: I did not say anything different than I would have eight years earlier, before the degrees and titles. I had already been an expert. The day I held my dying son and saw everything that failed him, I understood more about the need for change than any textbook could teach me. My expertise was born in grief, but it was not recognized until it was dressed in credentials.

So, what does this have to do with Black Liberation and Just Transition?

Working with the BLJT Institute, I have listened to many experts, some with letters after their names and many more who hold knowledge rooted in lived experience. They understand firsthand the harm caused by discriminatory policies, toxic industries, environmental neglect, and structural racism.

I am not Black. I do not know the bodily toll of poisoned air, asthma from living near industry, or the trauma of communities left to bear disaster after disaster. But I do know what it is to hold truth and be silenced. I know what it means to be dismissed while carrying life-saving knowledge. And so, I listen. Because expertise does not always come with a title, it often comes from surviving what systems create. If we are serious about Black Liberation and Just Transition, it starts with listening to those experts, too.

Building a New Knowledge Economy

The BLJT Institute exists to disrupt the long-standing pattern of ignoring lived experience as real expertise. We are not just adding chairs to the table; we are shifting the table itself, changing what counts as knowledge and who is recognized as an expert. For generations, dominant systems have elevated academic and institutional credentials while discrediting the wisdom that comes from surviving oppression, leading movements, and caring for communities on the frontlines.

Our work at the BLJT Institute is partly about dismantling this hierarchy. We are creating a new model for the knowledge economy, one that values community leaders, grassroots organizers, scientists, healers, elders, and those who have lived through harm as equal contributors to solutions. We believe expertise is learned and lived, and real liberation depends on honoring both.

The Institute provides people with skills they need to lead change, from building power in their communities to shaping policy to navigating complex systems of oppression and resilience. Every training is taught by experts of all kinds: those who hold degrees, and those who hold the truths systems have tried to erase. Together, they equip participants not only with information but with strategies, tools, and courage to transform the future.

Black Liberation and Just Transition are not abstract ideas. They are a practice. They are a movement toward a future where no voice carrying life-saving knowledge is silenced and expertise is measured not only by titles but by truth. That is the future the BLJT Institute is working to build, and I am honored to help create a space where every expert can be heard.