James Baldwin

SHANEQUA SHEILA ANDERSON is a Black queer, native New Yorker, raised in Chelsea.

For over 20 years, Shanequa has worked in a variety of settings. She has provided crisis management, group and individual psychotherapy, and advocacy for children and families all over New York City. Her early work was primarily at the intersections of child welfare and chemical dependence.

At present, Shanequa works privately as a sex therapist, intergenerational trauma interventionist, an adoption social worker, provides clinical supervision and advisement, engages in professional technical support and training.  She has lectured on Mental Health and Human Services at Kingsborough Community College, Clinical Linguistics at Brooklyn College, as well as Decolonizing Social Work Practice and Human Sexuality at Columbia University. Her clinical practice areas are focused on Black Genocide, complex and intergenerational trauma, promoting sexual pleasure and embodiment, as well as gender and sexual orientation affirmation. In addition, she supports community members in accessing strengths, understanding their attachment orders, engaging in self-honoring and self-affirming relationships, and other holistic freedoms.

Shanequa coordinated the Center Families Program at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Community Center in New York City in tandem with supervising the groundbreaking LGBTQ Foster Care Project. The project resulted in a citywide policy and advocacy initiative to find LGBTQ and affirming homes for all children in the New York City foster care system. She is also the Co-Creator and Agency Managing Director of Photo Safe, a non-profit organization whose mission it is to, "capture, print and preserve digital images of children in foster care in the United States with the sole purpose of creating a historic record for the personal use of the child."

Shanequa has a Master’s Degree in Public Administration, is a Licensed Clinical Master of Social Work, was a nationally certified Credentialed Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Counselor for 11 years (retired 2018). She completed a yearlong certification in Indigenous Focusing Oriented Therapy and has trained folx in this method in both New York City and Toronto, Canada. She is a doctoral student at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, California.

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It is Shanequa's personal intention to find something that she loves in each and every person she works with within the first hour of knowing them.  It is her professional mission to immerse herself in the uniqueness and culture of the individuals, couples, partners, and families she meets. Her ultimate goal is to promote authentic, bold, embodied living, allowing for quality of life elevation, safety, empowerment, alchemy, sexual celebration, and an overall holistic wellbeing.