Ja Quita Joy Roberts

Ja Quita Joy Roberts, also known as Mama Joy to many, was born and raised in Gary, Indiana. She’s a proud honors graduate of West Side High School. She began her Indiana University Bloomington journey in 1999 as a student, working in various capacities, such as the Academic Support Centers, Computer Labs, Office of Community and School Partnerships, Travel Management Services Department, School of Journalism, Art Museum, African American Arts Institute, and more. Her quick thinking and talents afforded her the ability to work on programming for IU, implementing new systems, creating forms and procedures (which several still exist today), and coordinating efforts across departments.

She’s currently the Finance and Office Administrator for the Black Film Center & Archive, a unit within the Media School. She was unanimously elected as the Administrative Representative Director on the Indiana Memorial Union Board of Directors in 2023. She founded the Women of Color Leadership Institute in 2008, where she has served as the only advisor since it began. She is the honorary founder of the WOCLI formed at Marian University and the chartering campus advisor for the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs – Godfearing Ladies of Integrity, Sophistication, and Success chapter at Indiana University. She has served on the Black Faculty and Staff Caucus, Black Women on Campus Committee, the Indiana Alumni Association Black IU planning committee, and so much more for many years.

In addition to her official roles on the IU campus, she wears many hats in the community such as a counselor and advisor for the Sisters Who Care organization, which is a group of teen minority ladies at Bloomington High School North that meet bi-weekly. She has served on the advisory board for the Banneker Community Center, volunteered with the Shalom Community Center, and more during her time in Bloomington. She helped with the organization of the Monroe County Food Train in 2020 to help feed families, provide necessities, and spread love to hundreds, during the pandemic shutdown, setting up tents, with music playing to encourage and uplift people, to remind them to find ways to be happy and tell them they are loved. She fundraised and organized a massive drive-thru graduation, for the entire class of 2020 at BHSN, so those students could be celebrated in grand fashion, while providing them a core memory of something positive to remember. She coordinated and organized meals throughout each school year thereafter, to be sure students didn’t leave school hungry, after the school day and practices.

She is a proud mom to thousands of her former and current students, and to her children: 23-year-old daughter Javenique Roberts, IU grad and current Master’s student in the School of Public Health, and 20-year-old son JaQualon Roberts, current basketball player entering year 3, at Davidson College (previously two years at Vanderbilt University).

Her lifetime of serving others, advocacy, philanthropy efforts, loving heart, and passion to simply do all that she can to make the world a better place, has not gone unnoticed. In 2022, she received the Black History Month Visionary Leadership Award from the City of Bloomington. In February this year, she was surprised with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the NAACP at IU. Additionally, and most recently, she was chosen as the winner of the 2025 Janice Wiggins Staff Mentor Award which is given to a faculty or staff member at Indiana University Bloomington who provides superb mentoring or support to undergraduate students involved with AAADS.