"No one consents to being lied to."
Dr Donna Oriowo said this about brand partnerships, but it applies to everything she does. As a sex and relationship therapist based in the Washington DC area, specialising in the lived experiences of Black women, her starting point is always the same: authenticity isn't a marketing position. It's a consent issue. When a creator or brand presents something that doesn't align with what they actually believe, the audience hasn't agreed to receive that. The trust that makes any kind of education or endorsement meaningful is built on that agreement. Break it and you don't get it back.
Donna came to sex therapy the way most good practitioners come to their field - through the people who kept showing up with problems nobody else was addressing. "People kept sharing their concerns with me," she says. She researched sex therapy, applied to Widener University, and built a practice around the intersection of mental health and sexual wellness, specifically for Black women navigating the layers of societal pressure, trauma, and conditioning that sit between them and the lives they want.
The first misunderstanding she addresses, every time: she's not a sex worker. "People confuse me with a sex worker and assume my job involves having sex or watching clients have sex." The actual work is about the mental and emotional barriers that prevent people from pursuing the sex lives they want. The body comes later. The mind comes first.
Speaking to the people who are usually spoken about
Donna's work is built around a distinction that most of the sexual wellness industry hasn't caught up with yet. There is a difference between speaking about a community and speaking to it. Black women are extensively studied, cited, and referenced in clinical and academic contexts. They are rarely the primary audience those conversations are designed to reach.
"Inclusion is inherently part of my work as a Black woman speaking to an audience that is often spoken about rather than spoken to."
This isn't a diversity statement. It's a description of a structural gap that shapes everything from how she develops content to which brand partnerships she'll consider. The question she asks of any collaboration is whether the brand is genuinely trying to reach and serve the community, or whether it's looking for a diverse face to put on a campaign that was designed for someone else.
For brands, the implication is direct. Inclusive marketing that uses Black educators as endorsers without changing the underlying product, content strategy, or community investment is not inclusion. It's extraction. Donna is specific about this distinction and specific about where she draws the line.
On consent as a life practice
Donna teaches consent far beyond the context most sexual wellness content addresses it in. For her, consent isn't a pre-sex checklist or a platform policy framework. It's a way of operating in the world.
"I teach consent not just as a part of pleasure practice, but as a life practice - seeking to know others' desires and avoiding giving them something they have rejected."
The extension of that principle into content creation is what produces the "no one consents to being lied to" framing. If you promote a product you don't believe in to an audience that trusts you, you've given them something they didn't agree to receive. That's a consent violation in the same structural sense as any other, and Donna treats it as such.
For brands thinking about creator partnerships, this is a more demanding standard than "does this educator have the right values?" It's asking whether the relationship between the creator and their audience is one of genuine trust - and whether the brand's involvement in that relationship honours or exploits it.
What makes a brand worth working with
Donna's bar for partnerships comes down to one question: is this brand people-focused or extraction-focused? "I am uninterested in businesses solely focused on extraction. I prefer brands that are people-focused, viewing business as inherently personal."
The most successful collaboration she describes was with a mental health tech company whose platform she was already using and genuinely valued. "It was easy to create content about something I already believed in and was passionate about." The success came from that alignment, not from the brief.
She is equally direct about what she expects in return. "Educators and providers often work for free and are underpaid. Brands should be prepared to pay more than what a professional would earn from seeing a single therapy client." The phrase she uses to close that argument is clean and final: "Exposure doesn't pay bills."
That's not a negotiating position. It's a description of an industry dynamic that systematically undervalues the educational work that makes sexual wellness brands credible in the first place. The brands that understand this - and price their partnerships accordingly - are the ones that build lasting relationships with the educators whose credibility they're trying to borrow.
What she's watching in 2026
Donna is direct about the political environment she's operating in. Conservative efforts to push back on sexuality education in the United States are not a background concern for her - they're an active threat to the work, and to the communities the work serves. Her response isn't retreat. It's louder, more sustained education, backed by brands and funders willing to treat the field as something worth investing in rather than just extracting from.
"Those in the field are focused on fighting back through education, maintaining community support, and seeking brands and people willing to offer grants and sponsorships to uplift the message beyond just money."
Her advice for any brand entering the sexual wellness space for the first time is the simplest and the hardest: "Learn. Humble yourself. Listen to and learn from the people you want to work with." Diversity and inclusion aren't features to add on. They're the foundation. If you're not building on them from the start, you're building something that will fail the communities it claims to serve.
Find Dr Donna Oriowo at annodright.com and on Instagram as @annodright.