Octavia Yearwood: Author, “How The Hell Did You Do That?”

Octavia Yearwood is an arts educator, motivational speaker, choreographer, and an overall entrepreneur from New York City. She relocated to Miami in 2012 to expand her arts services company, Team Ohhh. Through Team Ohhh she provides dance and visual art enrichment programming in public schools, private schools and dance studio’s around the world. She has been an educator for the last 15 years, using the arts to bridge the gap between community and academia. She recently became Program Director for South Florida Cares Mentoring Movement where she has been able to work and build relationships with notable arts, education and community organizations like the Perez Art Museum, ICA Miami, URGENT Inc, University of Miami, Rush Philanthropic and local artist to bring transformational experience to the youth of Miami-Dade and Broward County. From curating exhibitions that commission local artist to bring fine arts to the city of Miami Gardens or collaborating with those artist to bring free arts programing to the children of Overtown, Octavia moves forward in using the arts to fortify our youth. Within those years she has also taken her craft and program to Barbados, Haiti, India, Nepal and most recently France where she worked on a photography series to support her book, “How The Hell Did You Do That?” that serves as a guide book for foster youth and other youth suffering from a traumatic childhood. In 2016 Octavia received the American Express Emerging Leaders Award and was honored by Legacy Magazine as one of Miami’s 40 Black Leaders Under 40. 1. Talk to us about the very beginning where were you born and what was your family dynamic like? 2. You entered into the foster care system at a very young age, tell us about that. 3. Your book “How The Hell Did You Do That” was written with the intention to help foster youth and those who have endured traumatic childhoods- walk us through the process of self-healing, what are some of the tools you provide to rise back up from painful experiences.