Our Story
Our founder, Dr. Omolara Uwemedimo spent over 15 years as a pediatrician, researcher, professor and activist, committed to creating health equity for diverse communities in the U.S. and abroad. However, within the span of one week in May of 2019, she found herself unable to walk. Unbeknownst to her, she was about to become a statistic. After 2 weeks, she received her diagnosis — a brain lesion indicating multiple sclerosis, a chronic, autoimmune disorder.
As she tried to understand how and why this happened, she was confronted with a chilling fact. She was not alone. She was now one of the millions of Black women who are disproportionately diagnosed with chronic autoimmune disorders, infertility, cardiovascular diseases and other life-long diseases.
This experience was the result of “weathering”— a term coined by Dr. Arline Geronimus — the early deterioration of our health due to the effects of institutionalized discrimination, medical racism, and the persistent stress we endure trying to mitigate, resist, or undo the harmful effects of structural racism on our health.
This was beyond alarming. And the implications were deadly. If women of color in healthcare aren’t able to stay healthy, they wouldn’t be able to continue their work of delivering healthcare and advocating for communities dealing with health injustice who desperately need them .
Our mission became to provide these women with the support, strategies, and systems to create a life that allowed them to pivot out of toxic & taxing work environments and create a career path for themselves that allows them to pivot into their true purpose and ultimately, saves their lives.
However, we began to realize while Black, indigenous and Women of color (BIWOC) in healthcare now had the ability to uncover their vision and idealize how they wanted to use their expertise in order to create health justice, they often had multiple roadblocks finding the resources, funding, and support to start, fund, and grow enterprises that created the health justice they wanted to see in the world.
It has been exciting to see the most marginalized and minoritized women in healthcare boldly move into the space of transforming healthcare and re-entering those that have been neglected.
Melanin & Medicine now works to increase the reach of these innovations by ensuring health organizations that are working to transform diverse communities have the funding to sustain their work.
We use coaching, courses, and community, to support CEOs who want to expand their nonprofit & for-profit health practices for more impact, using our social entrepreneurship coaching and our profitable partnerships framework to secure funding.
We provide consulting and corporate trainings to support organizations who are ready to build, and implement culturally-responsive programs that truly make an impact for under-resourced communities
To do transformational work, Melanin & Medicine also has built an external team of contractors who work with clients with expertise in community engagement, grant writing, practice financial management and more.
The health justice movement must happen now and we exist to make sure that mission-driven health practice owners are leading the way.
The story of Melanin & Medicine has always been about health justice. Yet, we were founded because of a very real experience with health injustice.
As Melanin & Medicine grew - our mission became greater.
Meet the CEO
Dr. Omolara Thomas Uwemedimo is a healthcare founder, social entrepreneurship coach, healthcare practice funding consultant and growth strategist for women of color in healthcare.
Her career as a pediatrician spans almost 2 decades and includes her work as a public health researcher & professor for over a decade. Her work has been defined by a passion for social justice, serving as an advocate and working as a global physician across sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
In 2019, she co-founded Strong Children Wellness, a multi-award winning, healthcare practice network in NYC, providing integrated physical health, mental health and social services for minoritized, low-income children and families. Her healthcare network has been featured in the New York Times, NY1 News and Crain's for their reverse integration model, embedding care within community organizations including nonprofits and foster care agencies.
Given her expertise and success as a healthcare founder & owner of multiple healthcare practices, Dr. Omolara went on to found Melanin & Medicine, a premier social entrepreneurship & funding consulting company to help mission-driven practices secure capital, without incurring debt or diluting equity, to grow their own income streams and social impact. To date, Melanin & Medicine has helped hundreds of healthcare professionals through our workshops, courses and programs to build social impact businesses and achieve health equity for communities. In addition, they support thousands more through our popular Funding Your Healthcare Vision weekly podcast.
Dr. Uwemedimo is an expert in purpose-led entrepreneurship, securing funding for healthcare, addressing medical racism for marginalized providers and patients and building socially-responsive healthcare spaces. Her work has been featured in several media outlets including People.com, NBC News, Medscape, Essence.com, Newsweek, Crain’s, Politico, Reuters, and NPR.
Dr. Uwemedimo lives in Long Island, NY with her husband, Ilahi, and her two powerhouse daughters, Idara & Tolani.
DR. OMOLARA
Uwemedimo
Meet the Team
MArketing & automations LEAD
Raelynn is a Project Manager, Strategist & Program Specialist with a demonstrated history of working with non-profits, religious institutions and educational programs. She is committed to using her skills and integrity of heart to serve people, organizations, and institutions that promote, protect, and provide equity, justice and love to all people. Raelynn's focus within Melanin & Medicine is centered around not only providing operational support for the team but also leading research of partners & funders for our clients to streamline their funding journey.
RAELYNN
EXECUTIVE COORDINATOR & funder research
CLIENT EXPERIENCE LEAD
Janae, born and raised in Richmond, Virginia is the Client Experience Lead and uses her extensive customer service experience and expertise in supporting entrepreneurs to ensure they are making progress in their funding journey and supporting their productivity. She is a born multitasker and uses her training in project management to help clients organize their plan for success. She is able to provide advice and support to our clients on strengthening their operations including email management,, scheduling, payroll, expense reporting, client communication, website updates, and more.
Nijah is an ambitious and professional administrator with 10 years of experience managing and supporting both public and private sector entities in areas of sales, program and policy development, human resources, marketing and grant writing. Nijah’s focus within Melanin and Medicine is to bring awareness to the country’s next generation of medical leaders about M&M’s amazing resources that can leave communities in need changed for the better forever.
NIJAH
community outreach & strategic partnerships lead
Kristine brings a 15-year career of operations management to Melanin & Medicine. Hailing from California, she considers herself "The Wizard behind the curtain", and has professionally supported various Bay Area start-ups and non-profits during periods of hyper-growth as Office Manager, Operations & Culture Manager, and Administrative & Communications Coordinator. A self-taught web designer and published writer, she combined her skills to VOJ Virtual Assistance, which offered brand building, copywriting, web design, social media marketing, workflow, and automation operations to a number of high-profile coaches, entrepreneurs, and influencers. Kristine overwhelmingly believes in the entrepreneurial opportunities the internet provides and is dedicated to using her skills to help women of color get their seat at the table and bring their own business visions to life.
