Poet, educator, storyteller and community ethnographer. Sabriaya has been called a “jack of all trades” creative but considers herself a master of none as she is a continuous student of her craft and uses these four descriptors when people ask what she does. Her artistic journey began in Baltimore, where family members encouraged creativity and Sabriaya sang in a Southern Baptist Church choir as a youngster. In high school, she participated in every school musical and play over four years and sang the national anthem at an Orioles baseball game.

As a theater major at Temple, Sabriaya found two important mentors in Amina Robinson, a Broadway actress and assistant professor of acting and musical theater, and Kimmika Williams-Witherspoon, a playwright, poet and senior associate dean at Temple’s School of Theater, Film and Media Arts. Williams-Witherspoon introduced Sabriaya to poetry in performance and poetic ethnography and showed her how to weave it into a career. Robinson became a “second Philly mom,” supporting every step of Sabriaya’s journey and even visiting Baltimore to take part in family gatherings.

The network of mentors and classmates that Sabriaya joined at Temple also supported and financed her ambitious senior thesis—a full-scale production of a choreopoem, which combines poetry, dance and music. And when Sabriaya didn’t initially get callbacks after graduation, they encouraged her to keep going and helped her secure her first theater apprenticeship.