Dr. Maxine L. Bryant is an award-winning journalist, educator, speaker, and cultural truth-teller. A TEDx speaker, four-time author, and global presenter on diversity and justice, she champions accurate Black history through her GriotSpeaks brand, a signature initiative of her consulting firm, Bryant Educational Seminars & Training (B.E.S.T.), which she founded in 1998.

Dr. Bryant recently retired from the Criminal Justice & Criminology Department at Georgia Southern University, where she also served as Interim Chief Diversity Officer and founded the university’s Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Center. In addition, she served as Director of the Center for Africana Studies. Her professional background is deeply rooted in criminal justice reform, restorative justice, and African Diaspora culture.

She possesses a unique ability to diagnose systemic inequities while prescribing ancestral solutions. Understanding that miseducation is a form of mental incarceration, she ensures her work serves as a key to psychological liberation.

Her life motto fuels her mission: “Until the lion tells the story, the hunter will always be the hero.” Dr. Bryant remains committed to being the voice of the lion.