Oparah is an activist-scholar, a community organizer, and an intellectual focused on producing relevant scholarship in accompaniment to social justice movements.
[3] Oparah graduated with her bachelor's degree with honours from Clare College, Cambridge, in 1989, having studied modern and medieval languages (Spanish and German).
Shortly thereafter, she was hired as an Assistant Professor at Mills College where she taught in the Ethnic Studies Department for over twenty years.
Oparah left Mills briefly to serve as Canada Research Chair in Social Justice at the University of Toronto from 2004 to 2006.
In 2023 Oparah resigned from this role,[11] rejoined the faculty at USF and founded the Center for Liberated Leadership where she coaches higher education and nonprofit leaders committed to social justice and change in their organizations.