About Chelsea
Chelsea Higgs Wise is a 36-year-old Virginian who is grateful for the village of public school teachers that raised her. She is a mother, a social worker, and a community organizer, committed to unearthing Black history and who firmly believes that there will be no peace without justice. Chelsea was raised in Chesterfield, Virginia, and bounced the county/city line as a child of divorced parents. She saw two different worlds between the county and Richmond City — completely different communities only miles apart. She attended the University of Richmond, where she met some of the wealthiest people she had ever seen, who were only 18 years old. After a year, she switched her university, location, and major in order to graduate with a social work degree from Longwood University. She went on to a masters of social work at Virginia Commonwealth University and proudly served her community for ten years in the mental health industry. But in 2015, after the death of Sandra Bland, Chelsea's career began to transition to a more macro community perspective. She realized that many aiming to do the work were well-meaning white people who had the desire to shape their racial equity lens, but Chelsea wanted to be involved in creating a mechanism to empower Black communities economically and educationally, because "we are the work, and we have the answers." Intersecting her origin story, which includes her father being incarcerated due to nonviolent drug offenses, with recent events like Virginia's grapple with the latest racist scandal in February 2019, Chelsea rallied with some of the most incredible minds to birth a Black-led platform that is rooted in historic storytelling, political education and providing a POC space aimed at collective power that benefits us all. Marijuana Justice.