Ms. Perzavia Praylow was born and raised in Jersey City, New Jersey. The 1998 valedictorian of James J. Ferris High School, she graduated cum laude in 2002 at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. She earned a Masterʹs of Education at Urbana‐Champaign in 2005. She is currently a PhD student in the Department of History. She is working towards completing her dissertation entitled “Transforming Respectability: Black Women and the Development of Coeducation at Fisk, 1924‐ 1970.” She is also a Diversifying Faculty in Illinois Fellow and an instructor in the Department of African American Studies. In addition to being a historian, she is an ordained minister at The Church Of The Living God located in Champaign where Bishop Lloyd E. Gwin is the Pastor and Evangelist Mary Gwin is the Executive Director of Ministries. In The Church Of The Living God Brotherhood, she was licensed as a minister July 2006 and ordained as a minister July 2007. She has served in a variety of ministries where she has been able to exercise her gifts.

Perzavia was featured in Difference Makers 2010: An eBlack Champaign-Urbana Publication.