Chinyere's fotolove began as a teenager when she enrolled in her first black and white photography darkroom class. She soon became familiar with the weight of her Dad's Pentax in her hands, following the documentation path he forged beginning in the seventies. Chinyere's Dad captured much of her early childhood and key family moments on slides and even taught her to pose naturally to recreate a moment. Often seen with her camera around her neck, Chinyere documented her young adulthood life and travels, often taking portraits of her friends, family members, and students.

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Chinyere earned a B.A. in Social Thought & Analysis from Washington University in St. Louis in 2002. Her academic interests centered on coursework in African-American studies, Education, and Spanish and she developed and honed her research skills in seminars as a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow. Under the direction of mentor, Dr. Garrett A. Duncan Chinyere devoted her senior year to examining mixed race culture and identity and developed her writing voice by authoring an honors thesis that paired autobiographical creative non-fiction with a philosophical framework.

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Upon graduating, Chinyere began a career in youth development, arts administration, and teaching. Beginning in 2006, Chinyere taught community photography classes to the young and old throughout St. Louis for 13 years through the University of Missouri Public Policy Research Center, PPRC, Photography Project, Springboard to Learning, and North St. Louis Art's Council. While studying photography, 2007-08, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Chinyere continued her exploration of her own mixed-race identity, this time with photographic self-portraiture, taking courses with Fern Logan.

A 2022 graduate of the iSchool at U of I Urbana Champaign, Chinyere earned an MS in Library and Information Science as a Spectrum Scholar and American Association of University Women (AAUW) career development grantee. ​ An emerging information science professional, Chinyere is energized by exploring the overlap of information science, history, identity, and memory, with a particular interest in expanding access to and stewarding collections centering people of the African diaspora and Indigenous people of North America.

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Most recently, Chinyere was selected to be a memory worker fellow with the Autistic Voices Oral History Project (tAVOHP), an Autistic-led initiative dedicated to preserving the stories of Autistic people through video, audio, and written interviews. 

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​​​Chinyere's creative and professional practice is centered in care and influenced by noticing and slowness, often finding inspiration in phenomena and synchronicity in the natural world. 

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