Anneshia Hardy
Guided by ancestral memory and culture, she shapes narratives toward liberation.
Anneshia Hardy is a cultural narrative strategist, researcher, and founder whose work builds narrative power across the U.S. South. She is the Executive Director of Alabama Values and Alabama Values Progress, where she leads messaging, research, and digital strategies that strengthen civic engagement and pro-democracy movements. She is also a doctoral student in Communication at Georgia State University, where her research explores narrative, cultural memory, media ecosystems, and political identity, particularly in the U.S. South.
Anneshia is the creator of the Applied Cultural Meaning & Memory (ACMM Framework) Framework™, a narrative methodology that helps organizers understand how cultural memory, identity, and lived experience shape belief, belonging, and political behavior. The framework informs her broader narrative ecosystem work, including the Southern Narrative Project, a regional initiative developed in partnership with Sony Films, and The People’s Narrative Lab, a digital platform that equips users with culturally grounded narrative tools.
She is the executive producer and host of The Hardy Exchange, where research, culture, and narrative analysis intersect to explore the stories shaping public life. She is also the co-founder of Jelimusō Media House in Atlanta and the founding board president of The People’s Press Institute, which supports community-centered storytelling and creator journalism.
Anneshia is also co-founder of Blackyard LLC, a social impact firm that helps organizations and individuals maximize their impact in marginalized communities through culturally grounded narrative strategies.
Her narrative work has contributed to messaging and communications strategies connected to major voting rights cases, including Allen v. Milligan and Louisiana v. Callais, and her workshops have been featured by organizations such as the Obama Foundation and the NAACP.
Across her work in research, movement spaces, and media, Anneshia focuses on building narrative ecosystems that close knowledge gaps, expand political imagination, and strengthen community power.
Social Impact Ventures
I'm a social impact entrepreneur whose next venture is more than a business, it's a community liberation tool. I'm not just in the business of building a brand; I'm in the craft of creating a tool of liberation and tangible solutions, one innovative step at a time. Checkout and support a few of my latest ventures !
Blackyard LLC, Co-Founder/Social Impact Director
The Blackyard is a space to inform, inspire, and equip social change agents and organizations around collective liberation efforts in marginalized communities, particularly Black communities of African descent. We operate at the intersection of culture and social change.
Alabama Values, Executive Director
Alabama Values is a 501c3 grassroots communications organization working to increase civic engagement and education across Alabama and the deep South. We work directly with grassroots/civic organizations advocating to build narrative power and break down barriers to civic participation for communities across the state.
Alabama Values Progress, Exective Director
Alabama Values Progress is a 501C4 media advocacy organization seeking to amplify pro-democracy voices and policies in Alabama. We leverage the power of culture, media, and narrative strategies to build equitable power and counter mis/disinformation.
The Hardy Exchange
The Hardy Exchange is a hybrid space rooted in Southern memory, Black liberatory imagination, and the everyday brilliance of our people. The show creates intentional space to pause, study the moment, and make meaning through culture, history, and conversation.
Each episode moves through reflection, ancestral grounding, dialogue with guests shaping our world, and radical imagination. This is not a space for quick takes. It is a disciplined practice of thinking deeply, remembering fully, and imagining beyond the limits we’ve been taught to accept.
Applied Cultural Meaning and Memory Framework™
The ACMM Framework™ is a liberatory narrative methodology designed to help movements build ideological power through culture, memory, and meaning-making. Rooted in the Deep South and grounded in Black cultural traditions, Through applied tools, cultural analysis, and ecosystem-driven strategy, ACMM helps communities interrupt harmful inherited narratives and expand collective possibility.
Professional Affiliations
Public Relations Society of America
National Communication Association
Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications
National Association of Black Journalists
National Association of African American Studies
