Fonda Bryant

When it comes to speaking out and up for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention matters, Fonda Bryant is the person you want in your corner. She is a true advocate dedicated to educating anyone in her path. She speaks passionately and from the heart about mental health and suicide prevention issues from first-hand experience and is not ashamed because someone identified her struggles many years ago and saved her life. She has a story that needs to be heard and tells it in a way that is not only motivational and inspiring but helps many people from youth to adults be vulnerable about their own struggles and realize they aren't alone.

Fonda served two terms on the state board of NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) NC, she volunteers with NAMI Cabarrus County, MHA of Central Carolinas, and started her own foundation called Wellness Action Recovery, Inc., a nonprofit organization geared towards putting in the work for mental wellness and recovery through positive actions in 2020, and has a podcast with the same name called, Wellness Action Recovery, “The W.A.R. Podcast. She is a Certified QPR (Question Persuade Refer) Suicide Prevention Instructor and has trained thousands of people from all over the U.S. and the world online and in person on how to save a life. She’s also a Mental Health First Aid Instructor for Youth and an NC Certified Peer Support.

In 2023, she received the Recovery Champion Award Central Region, from NC Once Community in Recovery. In 2021, she was awarded Nexstar Media Remarkable Woman of Charlotte, the 2021 Nexstar National Remarkable Woman for her work with mental health and suicide prevention out of 10,000 remarkable women across the country, the 2021 Black Mental Health Symposium Mental Health Advocate of The Year, NAMI NC Advocate of the Year 2020, the MHA of Central Carolinas Outstanding Advocacy Volunteer Award 2019, the CIT (Crisis Intervention Team) Advocate of the Year Award from CMPD in 2019, and in 2018, she was named, by the Charlotte Observer's Charlotte Five as one of six women building the Charlotte Community.

Fonda has done national interviews with Yahoo Lifestyle, CBS News, and MSNBC and was in the national documentary Facing Suicide which aired on PBS in September 2022. She has gotten parking decks across the Charlotte area to put up her Suicide Prevention signs to stop suicide and hopes the movement will spread across the US. There is a bill in her name House Bill 858: The Fonda Bryant Suicide Prevention Signage Act to prevent suicides in parking decks. She has been featured for getting up her Suicide Prevention signs in the Washington Post and the Boston Herald and People of Charlotte Community Magazine.

Her QPR Suicide Prevention Training has been featured nationally on MSNBC, PBS, and Essence Magazine. She does regular radio interviews with iHeart Radio, Radio One in Charlotte, NC, and 105.3 FM in Dallas, Texas Whether in person, online, on television, in newspapers, magazines, or radio, her passion for mental health and stopping suicide has no boundaries.