YAYA McBRIDE.

Strategic leadership & organizational wellness

Leading people well is a discipline, not an instinct.

Twenty-five years across school systems and corporations, bridging the gap between human wellbeing and organizational performance — an approach rooted in personal transformation, where outcomes are created with ease and flow.

Portrait of Yamile "Yaya" McBride.
25+ years Across school systems, corporations & wellness organizations

Trusted to train & lead at

Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools Forsyth County Sheriff's Office McGraw Hill Row House Zumba Robbins Research International

Why partner with me

Four things I am actually good at.

Psychology

Psychology over strategy

I focus on the eighty percent psychology that moves the needle, ensuring the twenty percent strategy actually sticks. Success is built on self-discipline and self-alignment.

Leadership

Human-informed leadership

Shifting the narrative from trauma to human-centered capacity. I help leaders move from reaction to response, creating a welcoming culture of home where talent stays.

Resilience

Emotional fitness & resilience

Building the internal resourcefulness and nervous system regulation required to hold high-stakes responsibilities and close performance gaps.

Narrative

Narrative alignment

Strategic storytelling and NLP to drive behavior modification and professional growth, including linguistic reframing that aligns institutional language with human understanding.

Key impact areas

Capacity, culture, and the numbers underneath them.

0%

increase in parental involvement at the middle-school level, through a family engagement framework that strengthened community partnerships.

0%

reduction in discipline issues in the first year of school administration.

Top-tier

year-over-year growth metrics for ESL and special needs subgroups, consistently achieved despite initial projections of failure.

Capacity building

Increasing institutional resilience and executive emotional fitness.

Culture transformation

Creating high-performance environments of psychological safety and belonging.

Change management

Advanced linguistic reframing and educational scaling across diverse school systems.

Yamile "Yaya" McBride speaking on a panel, microphone in hand, mid-answer. Yamile "Yaya" McBride in a school corridor, holding a coffee cup and smiling.

Professional summary

A bilingual education leader who kept going past the job description.

Over twenty-five years of leadership experience advancing student success, family engagement and equitable access — with a deep mastery of the eighty percent psychology behind human behavior that drives leadership excellence and transformational community results.

Expert in designing student-centered programs, facilitating professional development and building cross-functional partnerships to drive organizational growth. Dedicated to leading teams through lived action and transformative mentorship.

Specialized in nervous system regulation and somatic practices that build leadership resilience and high-performance cultures.

Professional experience

Where the twenty-five years went.

2017 – PresentCo-Founder & CEO

McBride SOMOS Consulting

Transformational programs bridging education, wellness, leadership and community impact

  • Created culturally responsive frameworks supporting youth, families and organizations in developing resilience, identity and leadership capacity.
  • Designs and facilitates workshops, trainings and community experiences focused on belonging, empowerment and personal responsibility.
  • Builds partnerships with educational institutions, nonprofits and community leaders to expand access to transformational programming.
  • Integrates decades of educational leadership with neuroscience-informed coaching and somatic strategies.
2000 – 2017
2024 – 2025Education Leader & Administrator

Bilingual Educator & School Leadership

ABSS · WSFCS · SCSS — North Carolina

  • Reduced discipline issues by 27% in the first year of school administration.
  • Used performance data to move special needs and ESL subgroups onto academic trajectories, consistently achieving the highest year-over-year growth despite initial projections of failure.
  • Pioneered arts integration and project-based learning to build pattern recognition and embodied knowledge, improving retention and real-world application for students facing academic barriers.
  • Directed staff professional development and mentorship programs to enhance service delivery and organizational effectiveness.
  • Developed a family engagement framework that increased parental involvement by over 40% at middle-school level.
2023 – PresentCoach & Trainer

Coach, Trainer & Member Experience

Row House · O2 Fitness · YMCA NW

  • Achieved one of the highest conversion rates for first-time personal training sessions through deep community building and authentic connection.
  • Drove the highest number of personal training session bookings from the Member Experience role.
  • Led through a lived-action approach — serving as a physical testament to results rather than a spokesperson for them.
  • Finalizing National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) Personal Training certification.
2026 – PresentCo-Founder

Mana Flow Lifestyle

A wellness and empowerment platform

  • Developed programs integrating movement, mindset, nutrition, self-leadership and community connection.
  • Guides individuals through sustainable behavior change using coaching, accountability and embodied leadership practices.
  • Creates accessible experiences that support confidence, consistency and personal transformation.

Join the Mana Flow Lifestyle Group →

Education & certifications

M.Ed.
Supervision & Administration
B.S.
Special Education & Communications
Somatic
Master Somatic Coach & Teacher
NLP
NLP Practitioner
Hypnotherapy
Certified Hypnotherapy Practitioner
TLT
Time Line Therapy® Practitioner
Fitness
Fitness & Wellness Coach · NASM PT (finalizing)
Languages
English & Spanish — full proficiency in translation and cultural mediation

Core expertise

  • Leadership development
  • Organizational culture development
  • Educational program design
  • Workshop facilitation
  • Trauma-informed & somatic practices
  • Behavior change
  • Culturally responsive programming
  • Community engagement
  • Youth & family empowerment
  • Bilingual community initiatives
  • Public speaking & training
  • Strategic partnerships
Yamile "Yaya" McBride with a training group in Peru.
Bilingual training work that travels — leading a team offsite in Peru.
Yamile "Yaya" McBride facilitating a women's wellness retreat.
Facilitating the human side of organizational change.

What people say

The work, in their words.

Yamile has helped me get underneath my lack of self confidence after I was laid off and fell out of my career path. She has motivated me to be confident as I change my career path and start my own business.

Mark Browne

The grounding and gratefulness activities, along with mindfulness, while also building up their coping toolbox to work with challenging and sensitive topics in circles.

Amanda Causey · Peace Builders for Justice

She helped me tap into my own power. I have a better understanding of what keeps me stuck. She is very passionate about helping people empower themselves.

Barbara Cruz

Yamile asked me great questions to get me clearer on what I want and how to best move forward. If you want clarity on how to move forward, definitely book with her.

Laura McPhee

How to bring Yaya into your space

Let’s build a culture where teams don’t just function.

Schedule a conversation by email or phone. I work with school systems, nonprofits and organizations across the Triad and beyond — and I am willing to travel.