Tenaj Moody

Tenaj Moody is a mother, author, speaker, researcher, and social entrepreneur dedicated to advancing healing, leadership, and opportunity for women and girls impacted by incarceration, domestic violence, and systemic harm. A lifelong student of resilience and transformation, she believes that healing is most powerful when it is rooted in community, lived experience, and collective action.

Drawing from both her professional expertise and personal journey, Tenaj has spent more than a decade developing gender-responsive programs, facilitating healing-centered spaces, and advocating for systems that recognize the unique needs of justice-impacted women and girls. She is the founder and CEO of Light To Life, a social enterprise that provides healing-centered reentry support, research, technical assistance, training, and community-led workshops that help organizations and communities better serve women and families impacted by incarceration and violence.

Through her work, Tenaj has engaged more than 500 women nationwide and has supported community-based initiatives both in the United States and El Salvador. She is the lead researcher of They Are Survivors Too: Gender-Responsive Programming for Justice-Impacted Survivors, a community-based participatory research project that centers the voices, experiences, and recommendations of women impacted by incarceration and gender-based violence. The findings have informed the development of toolkits, curricula, trainings, and resources designed alongside the communities they serve.

Tenaj is a contributing author to Breaking Chains, Building Futures: Pathways to Redemption, Education, and Excellence.