Bio - Twanna A. Hines

“… charismatic … a gifted storyteller …”
The Washington Post

Tiniest Bio

Tinier Bio

Twanna A. Hines, M.S. (she/her) is an award-winning sexual health educator, relationships expert, author, and performer whose work spans 20 years, three continents, and audiences from corporate boardrooms to international policy convenings. She began her career at the U.S. Department of State at the American Embassy in The Hague. She has also worked for Planned Parenthood, where her youth programs won PPFA’s Excellence Award. She founded a social impact consultancy, FUNKY BROWN CHICK, Inc., that serves nonprofits, foundations, B-Corps, and international organizations.

Tiny Bio

Twanna A. Hines, M.S. is an award-winning sexual health educator, healthy relationships advocate, author, and performer whose work spans 20 years, three continents, and audiences from corporate boardrooms to international policy convenings. She has held roles at University of Chicago, Planned Parenthood, Newsweek, the U.S. Department of State at the American Embassy in The Hague, and Fortune 500 companies. She’s the founder of FUNKY BROWN CHICK, Inc., a social impact consultancy serving nonprofits, foundations, B-Corps, and international organizations.

Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, NBC News, Al Jazeera, Fast Company, and 25+ other outlets; she has been covered by The New York Times, CNN, Cosmopolitan, Essence, Vox, and 50+ additional media outlets. She has been called “a gifted storyteller” by The Washington Post.

She speaks, writes, facilitates, and consults from Lisbon, Portugal, and Washington, D.C.

Full Bio

Twanna A. Hines, M.S. (she/her) is a sexual health educator, healthy relationships advocate, author, performing artist, and founder and CEO of FUNKY BROWN CHICK, Inc. She has spent 20 years working in behavioral science, storytelling, and culture. She thrives at the intersection where most people stop: between data and storytelling, research and culture, and between what organizations and people say they value verses how they actually behave. Closing that gap, in relationships, in organizations, in social movements, is her work’s lifeblood. It is the throughline connecting every role she has ever held.

She began her career as as Foreign Service fellow with the U.S. Department of State at the U.S. Embassy in The Hague, where she researched Dutch healthcare and governance policy, and ensured compliance with international entertainment law. From there she moved into education, program management, and communications, leading award-winning sexuality education and teen pregnancy prevention programs at Planned Parenthood (PPFA Excellence Award, Special Efforts Serving Teens); managing a $575,000 arts and educational travel portfolio at the University of Chicago, where she worked her portfolio included film critics Roger Ebert and Jonathan Rosenbaum; building digital strategy for Fortune 500 company Land O’Lakes across 33 programs in 24 countries; and directing AndACTION at Spitfire Strategies, where she taught nonprofits and foundations to leverage film and entertainment for normative change on issues including gender-based violence and reproductive justice. She worked as a marketing communications professional at Newsweek, where she supported the magazine’s global editorial relationships. These institutions do not hire generalists, and she doesn’t build anything basic or generic.

In 2005, she founded FUNKY BROWN CHICK, Inc., now an 11-person social impact consultancy serving nonprofits, foundations, B-Corps, and international organizations across nine areas of justice, from sexual and reproductive health to climate justice, anti-racism, immigration, and civic engagement. The firm’s clients collectively manage over $655 million in programming budgets. Campaigns have moved over 900,000+ people, delivered 4X fundraising return on investment, and achieved newsletter open rates of 60–77% against a 15–25% sector average. With staff across the US and EU, and fiscal sponsorship through Fractured Atlas, FUNKY BROWN CHICK, Inc. bridges the transatlantic policy and funding environments that most consultancies navigate from only one side.

The first Black American woman with a nationally syndicated sex column, reaching 1.7 million readers through Metro international newspapers, she has written and performed two sold-out, critically acclaimed one-woman theater shows, trained at Sundance Creative Change, and spoken at Harvard University, SXSW, Northwestern University, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, the Museum of Sex, Soho House, and 80+ additional venues across the United States, Europe, and Latin America. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, NBC News, Al Jazeera, Fast Company, and 25+ other outlets; she has been featured in The New York Times, CNN, Cosmopolitan, Essence, Vox, and 50+ additional media outlets. The Washington Post called her “a gifted storyteller.” Her co-authored white paper Three Acts of Justice, developed with a Harvard University collaborator, provided a rights-based reproductive justice framework years before the threats it identified materialized.

She is a member of the Truman National Security Project and has volunteered with Tribeca Film Festival, Democrats Abroad, and the Amnesty International Film Festival.

She holds an M.S. in Sociology from Florida State University, a B.S. from Illinois State University, where she was inducted into the Steve and Sandi Adams Legacy Hall of Fame. She completed post-graduate studies at New York University and Universiteit van Amsterdam.

Having previously lived in New York City, London, Chicago, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, The Hague, and Washington, D.C., she is fluent in English and Dutch, with working proficiency in Portuguese and French. She current lives in Lisbon, Portugal.

Raised in the cornfields of Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, she penned her first op-ed at age 17. Written for her hometown newspaper, The Daily Pantagraph, it was a letter to the editor about why sports are good for girls.