NAACP award-winning Global Nonprofit Founding Director, Certified Grief Coach, Author, Forward Writer and International Speaker of Young, Black & Widowed®, Azurae Johnson Redmond, has passionately served the global widowed community since YBW nonprofit's founding during the pandemic in 2020.

Azurae was widowed-by-lung-cancer at the age of 27 in 2017, while 5 months pregnant and with their 10-month-old on her hip. She transformed her life by providing inclusive peer grief support and many other programs to over 3,000+ widows and widowers of all ages, nationalities, faiths and orientations worldwide. Her journey is documented in the newly released book, "Widowed Parents Unite" by Jenny Lisk, of which she was honored to be the foreword writer and a contributing author. She has presented about her widowhood journey on several international stages, including Soaring Spirits International's Camp Widow.

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Since YBW's founding her volunteer management has supported the production of 33,630+ volunteer hours. A few highlights include the execution of 2,334+ widow(er) peer support groups, with each session represented by 1-4 highly-trained widow(er) peer supporters, as well as 2,836+ support line calls with 77 callers desiring connection to voluntary crisis intervention. Additionally, she is honored to lead the Modern Widows Club nonprofit’s global "Black Widows Community,” serve as a Regional Peer Support Group Leader for Soaring Spirts International, serve on the Board of Directors of NAMI, the National Alliance of Mental Illness, and support her minority community through NAMI Chattanooga's "Sharing Hope" peer support program.

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For her efforts in advancing black mental health worldwide, as well as her service to her Chattanooga community through advocacy on several nonprofit boards, she has been named as one of Tennessee's Top African-American Women by the state-wide Tennessee Tribune and earned the NAACP Ruby Hurley Image Award for Community Activism.