Meet LaNaya

LaNaya Carter is a public health professional, author, and advisor rooted in New Orleans, Louisiana — and proud of it.

She began her academic journey at Dillard University, one of the nation's historically Black universities, where her passion for public health took shape. She later went on to earn her Master of Public Health from Benedictine University, deepening her commitment to the work she had already begun doing in communities.

For nearly twenty-five years, LaNaya has worked at the intersection of women's health, maternal and child health, and community resilience. Her career has spanned the full arc of public health practice — from direct service to systems-level advisory work. Today her focus is on leadership: developing the people and structures that make lasting change possible.

She is also a mentor — to emerging professionals, to women navigating their own chapters of becoming, and to anyone willing to do the quiet work.

LaNaya is a creative — with a deep love for visual design and the art of making something look exactly the way it should feel. Print, brand, layout, the weight of a well-designed page — it has always been her love language.

When she's not working, you may find LaNaya in the kitchen — baking and making pralines. A New Orleans girl through and through.

LaNaya is the mother of a daughter she loves fiercely. Butterfly Ambition is her debut book.

LaNaya Carter is the owner of Emma Lue — a creative and strategic space where the work and the design come together.