Dr. Avonia Richardson-Miller

My entire role is to create systems where every single person, regardless of the current circumstances, has a chance to reach their own future destination.

So it's about turning that personal mantra into a tangible reality for others.

This handsome gentleman behind me is probably my biggest fan.

Well, maybe he's tied with my mom.

This is my husband, and he retired just shy of 30 years of New Jersey State Police as retired Lieutenant Al Miller.

I'll take this.

I'll start this with a line out of a song from the rapper 50 Cent.

Okay.

And he has this line that says, I never took a straight path nowhere.

Life's full of twists and turns, bumped, bruised.

I live, I learn.

Right.

So for me, I think that is really, it really starts, you know, where my life beginning.

um in north new jersey and then at seven uh relocated to that family farm and you know my my my father was one of 18 children and he made this incredible decision to leave his job in his life in the city to return back to that farm to to to take uh take over the farm and care for his ailing parents and so this move was uh

And then we had an eventual return back to Newark.

And there I entered high school back in the inner city after being in the South.

These two experiences, I think, created a serious culture shock for me each time.

And I truly became what I would describe as a city farm girl.

I had to learn how to navigate two completely different environments.

And with this, I chose to embrace the best that each had to offer and to take the lessons that were learned and build upon them.