She received her Ph.D. in African Studies and Research from Howard University. Anita was awarded a pre-doctoral fellowship at the Carter G. Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia. She was also awarded the Davis Putter Scholarship Fund for social justice for her volunteer work in numerous social justice organizations in Baltimore, New York and San Francisco. For the past ten years she has worked on local and international issues ranging from environmental justice to youth rights. She participated in the American Friends Service Committee’s Africa Youth Initiative Network in Rwanda and Zambia. She is an alum of the Center For Third World Organizing’s (CTWO) Movement Activist Apprenticeship Program (MAAP) and worked as a youth program coordinator for the Common Roots Program at the Chinese Progressive Association in San Francisco.