About us
As the first cooperatively owned therapy practice in Michigan, Imani ya Kupinga (IYK) operates from a model that values liberation, justice, collective care, and non-hierarchical relationships. Our therapists are not only providers; many are also worker-owners who co-create the structure and vision of the practice enabling accountability to each other, our clients, and the communities we serve.
We know what it’s like to navigate systems that were never built with us in mind because we’ve lived it, too. Therefore, we intentionally disrupt the idea that therapists must be authoritarian, prescriptive or detached from society or our clients to be effective. Instead, we show up with authenticity, transparency, and care. Our clients see humans who are willing to be present and real with them.
We also resist the narrow lens of traditional therapy models that focus solely on changing individual thoughts while ignoring our systemic, societal and political realities. While we offer widely known evidence-based modalities like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), we also center practices that help clients connect to their bodies, their stories, and their sense of power. We validate systemic and structural realities, and we name the harm that many mainstream practices overlook. We hold space for grief, joy, rage, resilience, and everything in between.
Mission
IYK is committed to providing compassionate and accessible healing services, centering people who have limited access to quality and affirming mental health care.
History
Imani ya Kupinga (Swahili for Faith in Resistance) was founded in 2021 by Danielle Flint, LMSW, initially as a Black woman-led, solo practice grounded in intergenerational healing and liberation. The name honors her mother (Faith), her daughter (Imani), and the ancestral wisdom that guides this work: Healing is resistance and the practice is her offering to her family, her community, and the futures we deserve.
Recognizing the limitations of traditional therapy structures, Danielle envisioned a cooperative model for therapeutic practice where clinicians share ownership, resources, and values. In 2023, she brought together a team of like-minded therapists, all committed to anti-capitalist, anti-oppressive, justice-centered and abolitionist frameworks. Many were colleagues from shared movement spaces, united by a desire to resist systems that harmed both clients and caregivers. They share a vision of resistance that transforms capitalist exploitation, white supremacy, and pathologizing frameworks by centering justice, abolition, collective power, and liberation.
In Fall 2024, the team began the formal process of transitioning to a worker-owned cooperative, co-creating an operating agreement that reflected their values of shared leadership, mutual accountability, and healing as collective resistance. In February 2025, IYK officially became a cooperative. While the model is still in its early stages, it represents a bold and necessary reimagining of what care can look like. Some therapists are now worker-owners, while others remain in vital supportive roles, but all are part of a growing ecosystem of practitioners committed to liberatory care. IYK is still becoming, but its foundation is firm: we are healers, we are resisters, and we have faith in resistance.
Vision
A therapeutic practice that is forever evolving and striving to embody the world we want to live in: one that is anti-oppressive, inclusive, equitable, cooperative, restorative, imaginative and joyful.