Orisa CDC Leadership Team
Darasia Selby
Executive Director
Darasia Selby is an educator, writer, healer, and community organizer in Philadelphia. While earning her BA in African-American Studies and Religion from Temple University, she was introduced to the Afro-Cuban Lukumi Tradition and was initiated to Oshun in 2009. Since then, Darasia has deepened her studies in the Ifa-Orisa Tradition and initiated in the Isese Tradition of Nigeria to Egungun in 2012 and Ifa in 2014 and continues to study and practice within both of her Ifa-Orisa spiritual lineages, as well as Hoodoo, the spiritual tradition of Black people in North America.
Darasia earned a MA in Liberal Arts, with a focus on Africana Religions, from Temple University; has trained as a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist, and is currently matriculating through a graduate program in Clinical Nutrition and Herbal Medicine from Maryland University of Integrative Health with the long-term goal of collaborating with other activists and health care providers to start a People’s Clinic in the spirit of Mututu Shakur and the Black Panther Party.
As a community organizer and healer, Darasia leads an ile (spiritual house) in Philadelphia that is committed to the spiritual, cultural, and political growth and liberation of Black people throughout the Diaspora and is a long-time member of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.
Joe T. Quinones
Founder and Board Chairman
Joseph T. Quinones (Obakanla) is the founder and board chairman of The Orisa Community Development Corporation he was born in Harlem, New York, is a military veteran and a graduate Temple University School of Business and graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business’s MBA program in 2003. He is also the CEO of the Obara Realty Group (www.ObaraRG.com), a real estate investment management, and development firm operating based in Philadelphia, and also Atlanta, Nigeria, Ghana, and Atlanta.
His mother, Marjorie Quinones (Sango Gunmi), was the first African-American to be initiated as a priest of the Yoruba religion in America in 1963. Everyone in Baba Joe’s family is Olorisa, with his brother David (ibaye) having been initiated as Obatala in 1966, and his sisters, national best-selling author Karen E. Quinones and Kathleen (Kitty), who are biologically and spiritually Ibeji, having been initiated as Yemonja and Osun in 1970. Karen and Kathleen are the first biological Ibeji initiated in the USA. As a consequence of his elder sisters and brother being initially baptized Catholic, Baba Joe was the first African-American born into the Traditional Yoruba religious faith.
Baba Joe was initiated by Babalorisa Lloyd Weaver (ibae) to Aganju on May 26, 1979. His mother is the progenitor of Ile Ase, which was founded by Lloyd (ibae) and Stephanie Weaver and with over 250 priests initiated is the largest, most active, and respected African-American Orisa Ile (house) in the country. Some of Sango Gunmi’s most noteworthy godchildren and protégées include Lloyd (ibaye) and Stephanie Weaver, and she was an adjubona and Orisa grandmother to esteemed elder, Oseye Mchawi, who, along with Iya Stephanie Weaver, is one of the two spiritual matriarchs of Ile Ase.
Click here for Baba Joe’s full bio.