Assata is the founding director of the Sankofa Research Institute (SRI), which is a nonprofit with a mission to “create knowledge to build community.” To accomplish its mission, SRI employs Community-Based Participatory Research to work collaboratively with academic researchers, community organizations, and funders to generate empirical evidence to inform social change. Some of SRI’s current and past project partners include Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, Southeast Houston Transformation Alliance of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, Dance Source Houston, Project Row Houses, St. Anne Catholic Church, and CHRISTUS Health Foundation. She received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Houston and went on to earn a master’s and a doctoral degree from Pennsylvania State University. She has extensive training in quantitative and qualitative research methods and analyses. After serving on the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh, she returned to Houston, Texas, to work with Project Row Houses (PRH), a nationally and internationally recognized public arts organization that utilizes art as a transformative mechanism for revitalizing economically-depressed urban communities. She is an adjunct professor at the University of Houston, teaching courses in the sociology department and the arts leadership program. As a public sociologist, Assata serves as the Board President of the newly formed Houston Community Land Trust, the Third Ward Cooperative Community Builders, and the Emancipation Economic Development Council, which is a people-focus and place-based effort to revitalize, preserve, and protect a historic African-American community in Houston, Texas. Most recently, she was elected as the founding board president of the Community Care Cooperative, which is Houston’s first home care agency owned by certified nurse assistants and committed to serving aging residents living in the historic communities of Third Ward and Fifth Ward.