Her Story
About Teresa
My career spans 51 years and is deeply rooted in my family's legacy of service. I was born in Germany where my father was in the military, and I helped my parents as an intern there before we came back to the United States. I was an athlete who competed in 14 different sports for both the United States and West Germany, which allowed me to travel extensively. When I came to America to attend college at age 16 after graduating early, I worked at Ohio State during summers doing tours for incoming students from all over the world. That's also when I started martial arts with my coach Rick Moore, and I've been with him for 40 years. I competed 30 to 42 times a year in martial arts for over 28 years, made the Karate Hall of Fame in 2023, and have been nominated for the Greatest of All Time Award Hall of Fame. My first husband died when I was 29 years old, and I spent the next 10 years throwing myself into educating others, traveling, and competing. I've amassed a collection of 44,000 artifacts and 1,000 textiles that tell the story of my family's diverse Native American, African American, and Caucasian backgrounds. I use this collection to create international exhibits that teach cultural understanding and reconciliation skills. I opened a two-year exhibit in Underground Atlanta with 5,000 square feet that had 1.6 million people sign my guest books. I love seeing how my exhibits bring people together - they may come in different entrances and not associate with each other at first, but before they leave they're all talking to each other, walking around together, and sharing their backgrounds and experiences. I opened a museum in McCormick, South Carolina that only had 200 people a week but made the Smithsonian Institute's places to see in America and attracted tourists from as far as Japan. I became a queen mother in Manchesim, Ghana in 2015, and in March I was awarded as one of the 100 most influential women in all of Africa for my work doing eyeglass distribution, food distribution, library projects in the Volta region, and menstrual health initiatives for 200 girls in 5 villages. I'm now building a facility to house my museum collection and continue my work in education and cultural reconciliation.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Teresa
01What do you attribute your success to?
I think it's a result of my mother and the women in my family who are really dynamic movers and shakers. Our family has dedicated their lives to changing our communities and bettering the lives of others, not just people we know, but people we don't know. Because we are Native American, African American, and Caucasian, there are so many different issues with each of those communities, and because we've been removed from our communities, we then tried to make an impact on all of those communities. My mother and the people before her, my great aunts, all went to Africa to do schools, food programs, roads, power structures, and education. My family spans centuries, with my great-grandfather born in 1814, my mother's father born in 1856, my mother born in 1934, and me born in 1957. This puts me in a different mindset and gives me a unique perspective on history and the importance of not just getting over the past, but understanding and reconciling with it.
02What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
The most important values to me are bringing people together and creating cultural understanding across diverse communities. I love seeing the experience I've provided bringing people together - even children in their classrooms who didn't get along, by the end of the exhibit they're all talking to each other and interacting in a new way because they realize they've each been through similar experiences of discrimination, alienation, or poverty. My exhibitions give people a place to express and talk about and release their feelings. I try to use my collection to teach delay gratification and reconciliation skills for communities and children, giving them a hands-on experience so they get a cultural understanding of things that all the diverse groups have been through. My family has dedicated their lives to changing our communities and bettering the lives of others, not just people we know, but the people we don't know.
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