 All right. Well, welcome everyone. So pleased to see you all here. So thank you for coming as you know We begin every event of significance at Mount Holyoke College with a land acknowledgment So I will begin that way Mount Holyoke College begins each event in the life of the college by acknowledging that those of us in Western Massachusetts are occupying the ancestral land of the non-Ataq people We also acknowledge the neighboring indigenous nations the Nipmuk and the Wampanoag to the east the Mohegan and Pequot to the south The Mohegan to the west and the Avanaki to the north We encourage every member of our community to learn about the original inhabitants of the land where they reside the impact of settler colonization contributed to the displacement removal and attempted genocide of indigenous peoples This land acknowledgment seeks to verbalize Mount Holyoke's commitment to engage in shared Responsibility as part of our collective humanity. We urge everyone to participate in action steps identified by the indigenous community based in Oregon organizations Thank you and again. Thank you for coming. I am personally very excited to be in conversation with two dynamic graduates of the psychology and education department of Mount Holyoke College and I can say that we've got quite a few psychology faculty in the house we're very excited by that and of course some wonderful students and faculty from other departments, but I also want to acknowledge that one of our graduates Cherise Pickron is joined here today by her parents and her grandmother So we want to say special. Thank you for them for coming. We're so pleased you could be here and So it's just very exciting for me for lots of reasons. You're going to hear why To launch this launching leadership Conversation with two dynamic graduates as I said of the psychology and education department Dr. Kira Hudson banks class of 2000 I'll tell you more about cure in just a minute and Dr. Cherise Pickron class of 2008 and they both are Psychologists I knew when they weren't psychologists yet So it's really exciting to me to be able to see them in this Wonderful phase of their careers What Kira and Cherise have in common is they are both using their expertise in Psychology to impact public understanding and dialogue about the impact of race and racism on young children and what we can do about it Kira Co-founded the Institute for Healing Justice at St. Louis University where she is a professor in the Department of Psychology she also served as a racial equity consultant for the Ferguson Commission and Continued as the racial equity catalyst for Ford through Ferguson Her research teaching and facilitation around equity diversity and inclusion have helped frame racial equity in the St. Louis region and beyond Really excitingly she's going to talk about this. She not only does those things But she and has a podcast she's going to tell us about called raising equity But she consults regularly with media outlets such as Nickelodeon HBO HBO max and Pixar So we'll hear more about that Cherise is a developmental psychologist and an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota's Institute of Child Development where her work examines the way early experiences shape the perceptions and representations of people that vary along race and gender Her work as a president's postdoctoral fellow examined attentional processes sensitive to facial expressions using electrophysiological measures Also known as EEG and ERPs as well as eye tracking Her goal is to actively work with families of diverse backgrounds to build a collaborative bridge between Communities in the Minneapolis area and her work in child development Cherise is also taking her work in psychology into the public square And I had the pleasure of hearing her on Minnesota Public Radio Talking about her research with babies and how they come to recognize and understand race. So We have two media stars here I'm really excited about the fact that they've both been using Their knowledge to translate science into everyday applications and so we're going to talk about that But we're going to start with Kira and in the spirit of full disclosure I've known Kira's and she was a first-year student in my psychology class back in 1996 yes on the first day of class I talked about my research and Kira said I'd like to know more about your research and she came to my office and the rest is history so So it's very exciting to see Kira back here, but what we really want to know Kira is how have you gone from? You know being a professor at st. Louis University to Hollywood I just want to first say thanks so much for having me It's really beautiful to see everyone here, and I want to give people hugs and nice to be back here in this space And I'm in some ways. I don't know but in other ways when I slow down I do know how I made that leap right, but I also want to credit I think the reason I was able to make that leap is because of you and Learning from you so when I said I was interested in your research It was because your book then on black families and white communities was my story Right growing up in a predominantly white suburb of st. Louis And so I you gave me language for my experience on racial identity And so I started to get curious and you introduced me to dr. Bill cross and his research and him and so I think the way that I made the leap was that I was watching you in psychology of racism in other spaces and While you were writing why are the black kid? Why are all the black kids? Translate the theories that we were learning in the class to the lay public. So I Honestly, I do I credit you in that sense. I've been doing that translational work forever and so when George Floyd's murder happened and the world paid attention in a way it hadn't before right there've always been ebbs and flows Like you mentioned the Ferguson Commission, so Mike Brown was killed in st. Louis. That's where I am That region right had a reckoning But George Floyd was on another level and talk about we can have a whole conversation about why I Had been doing the work. I had been working in different spheres helping people understand their ideals about Racism and what they wanted to do and put it into action And I don't actually so the reason I say I don't know why is I don't know why Hollywood at that moment But I got so many calls from it was Pixar HBO HBO Max Warner media Warner Brothers Broadway like I think there was something about that moment that made them realize Oh, we're not just these free spirits doing creative things that we have problems too I don't know why they thought they were exempt, but they did and I was able to talk to them. I was able to help them But you know even as you say that Kira, they didn't just find you I mean you weren't just you know, you were findable and part of the reason you were findable I'm thinking is because of your presence on social media and in particular the raising equity podcast that might be right So in a way my husband Aaron who is kind of my partner in this work now We started the podcast because he was he was basically saying this is like free advertising for you and what you do Have the podcast you talk to people help people understand that you help people I joke It's kind of the Olivia Pope side of my work There's problems. I can come help you fix it using a psychological frame and evidence-based work and So yeah, the podcast I think and the Institute as well. So I've always been Trying to say we have these ideas. We shouldn't keep them in the ivory tower And so that moment allowed me to make the leap and that work honestly has helped shape How some studios do productions from pitch to post thinking about What equity diversity inclusion means from the moment you conceive of an idea when you develop it when you cast it when you look in the crew Through through the whole arc and so it's been it's been really fun to shape It is to see ways in which Hollywood thinks they're doing everything right because they put some token person in a position and have them realize Oh wait, that's that's not enough that representation matters. Yes and We have to think about How we shape the story, right? We don't always want people of color to be the side story We want to know where they live and who their family are just as much as we want to know about the main characters and so There it's been it's been an interesting shift to try to push them to think beyond just numbers and tokens and side characters Well, there's more to say about this and I know we're gonna talk more about it But it's exciting to hear the ways in which your work has evolved over this time But now we're gonna turn to Cherise for a moment because Cherise is at an earlier stage in her career You know eight years later graduating from Mount Holyoke in the class of 2008 Which was a weird time to be graduating Given what was you know the economy was falling apart in all of that But am I right you went straight into graduate school? No Yeah, so after So as you mentioned 2008 not an ideal time to be graduating from college for many folks who are looking for paid positions, but I Did something that maybe some people would have frowned upon would just take an unpaid internship Working in Key Largo, Florida at this Adolphin assisted therapy put program which I then Was actually kind of one thing that I realized is that it sparked the research Question even more this idea of needing research and understanding processes was started at Mount Holyoke But this kind of internship experience even got me more and excited about this idea of research So after that I then worked at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida for for two years and then Was accepted into a post-baccalaureate research program that was funded by the National Institute of Health and NSF National Science Foundation. And so between those that's how I got into the research and into Yeah, yeah, so I there's some you know, I'm not I wasn't just the academic track Which I think is very valuable. Well, tell us about the babies. Yeah Yeah Yeah, I you know people ask so what are you doing? I said I do baby science, right? So I do research with infants toddlers preschoolers and I Think of kind of the research areas that I'm interested in a lot about kind of just a reflection of my life and The questions that I'm asking in terms of exploring and understanding how these tiny little humans Who seem to not be able to do a lot actually learn a lot know a lot and can do quite a bit That has these lasting things and it's a little bit of a research research kind of statement where I have parents who You know are interested in early childhood my mom is an early childhood educator and my dad worked in academia is obviously You know and so I'm now in this kind of like marriage of the two-parent background but also this idea of being able to Show parents what their little ones are no like what are they learning and the actions that they're doing the Decisions that the parents are making have long lasting lifetime experience, you know impact And we can say that about nutrition about you know motor development We can say that about you know Learning to read or write like there's all sorts of things that that fall under this category of long-term impact But what I think is underappreciated is that the people you see the people you interact with how you speak about someone How you label someone by nine months that is laying foundation for bias When we see that at three or five years of age So that is kind of the messaging that I'm trying to one explore but to share. Yes Yes, so for those of So I'm familiar with your research, but for those who aren't I bet some people are thinking what do you mean at nine months, right? Yeah, yeah, can you give us an example? Sure sure so Faces we think of a human face right and a lot of times for us who are sighted who use visual world We see a face and there's going to be some millisecond decisions that we make about that face and We make those really fast decisions because we have our whole lives of experience of seeing faces and then Associating meaning with that face, right? So if I see you I can identify Who you are do I know you do I not know you your emotion your And then I'm going to go to these social constructs of race and gender and I'm going to put categories on that really quickly To with and it's subconscious because of our lifetime of experience But at nine months, that's also happening and that by nine months of age infants are Becoming really good at face recognition, but particularly the faces that they see the most so they our brain is Firing up and paying more attention to the faces that we see on the regular basis because those are the ones that keep us alive right those that matter and our brain is going to start to prune away the Connections that are for faces that are less useful in our environment, right? And so between three and nine months of age, there's this dramatic shift in the brain That results in being really good at telling faces that are of a race that we are familiar with and Not so good at the faces of races of that we are less familiar with and that Level at nine months is equal to the level of what adults do, right? So by nine months they look like grown-ups in some ways based on the experience that they have in their environment. I Use your research as I teach adults in different spheres about why race matters Because people want to say oh, I just see you as an individual It doesn't matter and I'll say we have research that shows That by this month right I use it to help people so if babies see it You can't claim to not see it, right? So that argument has to fall away and you have to be accountable for what you do see and manage it exactly Yeah, yeah, and so the part though then is that nine months face we see it and then see it the social implications of The idea of race or the idea of gender are not solidified at nine months, but they're being built Yeah, right so we start with the perceiving we see a face and we are learning that certain faces are more common We have positive experiences with our caregivers mostly, right and that positive affect an association Plus being really good at telling my mom's face from a different face Leads to these laying of foundations for implicit racial bias and also eventually explicit stereotypes too So you can see why people want to talk to Cherise on the radio And and I know that Kira is having similar kinds of conversations What I am interested in sharing with this audience because I know we have just raise your hand if you are a psychology student studying psychology Most of the students in the room are and I know you've got quite a few psychology faculty members here some of whom knew you when you were students and So I just have to brag for a moment I told Cherise I was going to do this so I don't want to embarrass her, but she's a brand-new professor right at the University of Minnesota and And the PhD you got is from UMass, right? UMass immersed in developmental psychology and and then you did a postdoc right in Minnesota and When Cherise was coming out of her postdoc. She was trying to decide where to work And she was trying to decide should she take the job at University of Wisconsin or Minnesota or Virginia Tech or Stanford and In the end she decided to stay in Minnesota But I just think that for the psychology faculty members we can all like you know Shine ourselves up here because that's a great outcome for one of our students And I think I will say the department prepared me well because I would when you were asking did you go straight through? I said you might have been thinking about me. Yes. I did. Yeah, and it was it it was odd It wasn't always a Given that you could get into a clinical psych program straight through But I credit the training that I've received and the research experience I received to be able to go to Michigan Absolutely, absolutely, and then from Michigan. What happened after that care after Michigan? I went to Illinois Wesleyan University. I went to a small of arts college because Clearly I love small of a rise colleges And they prepared me well. I wanted to do the same and then life brought us at a kind of a Transition point and I started to look at other positions in st. Louis University is where I landed And so that was a shift having doctoral students rather than just undergrads So it's been a good one. So tell us about the Institute for racial healing So the Institute for healing justice and equity it's a mouthful, but healing justice is Is a phrase that Kara page and others have Pioneered and actually they just wrote a book it just came out the last week or so you're familiar with it awesome Awesome, and so We were excited to think about what does it look like to to leverage the resources of a research institution For community in a way that's authentic because the way that it often happens at universities is you say you're partnering with community But it's extractive. It's not true partnership And so the Institute is committed to working in our multidisciplinary across disciplines in Community and in ways that share power with the community That's great. And and Sharice in my introduction of you one of the things I said about you was that you were also trying to bridge build bridges between communities and the university Yeah, so exactly what you're saying is that this we want to stop the extraction experience, right because It's of course one-sided. There's only benefit from one But the questions and research that both of us are interested in are are doing it because of Families are because of community, right? So we should include community in the conversation in the development of the questions themselves So, you know, as you said, I'm just kind of getting started so for me right now it's This the beginnings of partnership building so trying to Think about either daycare centers or things that there are opportunities for me just to show up and be in that space So not to say, oh, I'm an expert in this I know best but to just show up and be supportive like hand out the cheerios or whatever it is Right, so just being there and being in that space And if there are questions that they that communities wants to ask and I can be a part of it Then that's like that's what I want to see have happened and there's a new Program in St. Paul Minnesota. That's called before racism before before racism and And my hope is to start building that conversation with the daycare to because their daycare is all about kind of Thinking about before racism starts in terms of development getting to those babies Yeah, yeah, so Cura you used a word when you were talking about the Institute And the community connections and that word was authentic, which of course made me think about a phrase I've been using a lot around here, which is authentic boldness, right? So I'm gonna just read this question because I ask everyone the same question This is a phrase that I learned from one of our alums in an interview that I read about actually The alum is Sheila Marcello who's an entrepreneur very successful entrepreneur, but she described her experience of going into Offices looking for funding and her need to really enter with a certain kind of self Presence because otherwise she was just being dismissed right and so she talked about Being authentically bold and this is what she said about it When you bring your truest self to the table, you are able to be bold in your own authenticity and it seems to me there's a lot of evidence in listening to each of you about that authentic boldness in your journey from South Hadley, Massachusetts to what you're doing now and I'd just like you to reflect on that In the sense that what about your Mount Holyoke experience and it may be different for each of you Might have helped you deepen that sense of authentic boldness. I Always joked when I was at Mount Holyoke because I did my junior year at Spellman on exchange and it was a great experience But it gave me an opportunity to experience another institution that there's something in the water here Like there's just in a good way That there's just something in the in the way that It it fed a intellectual curiosity in me that I didn't know needed validating I didn't know I was Not confident in that I thought I thought I was confident right but being here Really allowed me to figure out that I was enough in a lot of ways whether it was women being in leadership positions Whether it was being a black woman leading APAU whether it was You know, yeah, it's okay to be a nerd and do your homework before you go out and party Right like I had a group of friends. That's what we did like we got our work done we also went and had a lot of fun and I Think it allowed me to I would say I'm still fine tuning it But it allowed me to step into who I am and to not be apologetic about it Let me say that again because I just went up at the end It allowed me to step into who I am and not be apologetic and to be unapologetic that That I have a gift in the way that I do what I do and I'm a clinical psychologist But I don't look like other clinical psychologists, but I also do you know, I do I do things in a a little bit of a Well an authentic way, right? And it seems to work and it seems to impact Spaces that I enter and so I've stopped questioning it and I think Mount Holyoke helped me Be able to explore that and also pushed me to to learn broadly and And deeply but the liberal arts education It gave me the foundation for who I am That's great. Thank you. And how about for you, Cherise. So you just put all of that on for donor cards, right? There we go, right we need this on for donor cards Um I have some similar thoughts on this and feelings really resonate with me with what you said and but trying for me I try to put it in kind of two different buckets one is That and I know there's like a podcast that says we can do hard things But Mount Holyoke really I mean you we do hard things at Mount Holyoke But you and you do it in a way that is true to that I did it in a way that was true to myself and it was hard like Learning and thinking and reading and writing are all hard things for me to do It's a it's a skill we all practice and it's hard and I'm in a career where it's I do all the time And it's still hard, but you know at Mount Holyoke. I was really challenged And I worked really hard But in a space where you're doing it as yourself and you're doing it in a way that you like want to do something like a Hard thing, right? Like it's kind of like motivating to do it and so I think of that in terms of being authentically bold right and then The other part that I think you're you're speaking a little bit too that I think about is I I Am in spaces often we find ourselves in spaces where you're the only one or I'm the only blank Group check a box that I'm the only one in right and I recognize that But I find that being at Mount Holyoke and then moving forward and even starting grad school at UMass that I Would see it, but it didn't Hurt me it didn't make me shy away from the experience Right. I still raised my hand and asked my questions or I still push back, right? So again at Mount Holyoke you have this opportunity to see what's going on But for me it was like, okay, I see it But I'm gonna keep going right and that was something that parents instilled in me But also really was read like brought highly up in here at Mount Holyoke That's great So I know that our students in particular have come to ask some questions So I want to open the floor for that purpose so Floors open What do you do when you're in a situation and an opportunity comes up over your table that you know You cannot say yes to because you have a prior commitment or prior researchers are trying to work one Which knows a great opportunity. What do you do in those instances? Do you have this ability where you can say no after I need to focus on or do you just say scratch what I'm doing? This other opportunity opened up for me, and that's what I need to work on because that's my new passion Hmm the plate is already full. What do you do? Yeah, I Mean I a few things come to mind in that I don't typically if it if something comes An opportunity comes my way and it's like soup. It's really exciting. It's something I'd love to do But my plate is full I often will say this is really exciting. It's something I want to do Not now is it possible to do me right and I actually said that to a pretty big project Fall of 2020 because everyone was calling in 2020 and what's interesting is like to not feel like all is lost They ended up circling back to me a year later. They're like are you are you free now? Right like so to know that it's okay to say no Right, but then I also want to say something that I've learned is to have a no committee So that sometimes I try not to let my plate get too full so that I leave room for other opportunities to come And so when things come my way, I actually there was an opportunity that came my way I have a committee of friends that I'll call to be like alright I want to say yes to this you know should I say yes to this and they are the committee that helps me say No, because that's hard to do sometimes and one time they're like well But if you let go of this other thing you could do this and it's like well that served its purpose your full professor now You don't have to continue to do this other thing and that can allow you to do something else So to me what that also says is don't isolate yourself Like use the people around you to help you figure out like if this really is a passion project Can you reconfigure what's on your plate? Yeah, I agree Yeah, I mean Mount Holyoke I found myself it was very hard to say no and I got overwhelming And since then I've learned about the art and I'm saying no and feeling really like Confident and saying no Even when it feels like oh, this is really exciting, but I in addition to saying No, or maybe in a little bit, right? I I can also say, you know, there's this other person that also would be really cool for it to be a part of this Conversation, right? So you bring somebody else in who you know might have a little more space than you do, right? So saying no doesn't mean you have to cut off the opportunity altogether and it also brings brings up so you know if I have Graduate students that I'm mentoring right bring them into the project. They might maybe have less time than I do But I say hey, you want to be a part of this too, right? So there are ways to say no without losing contact with that opportunity Yeah You're saying that makes me think of sometimes when I've needed to say no and I say call Kira Yeah, that's that's how I ended up on CNN for the first time. Thank you Other questions Yes, I found baby stories very fascinating So I want to know when is the right time to talk to babies about race Yeah, great question There's there's never a bad time to bring up these constructs right of race and As adults we don't give credit for how early they notice something, right? So it's never too early, but but you just approach it in different ways, right? So and we also think about it as it's not just talking. It's Experiencing right so bringing as I said it, you know The earliest kind of shift in our brain and paying attention to faces is driven by your environment So what we don't know is if our environment is maybe more racially diverse or racially integrated How does that then maybe shift? How does that change the brain's shifting, right? So you may not necessarily be talking to a three-month-old, but you're giving them more faces to see a face Kind of diary is more diverse, but also it's again another piece of that is Think about it again, not just talking at but about how we talk about people What are the words that we're using the labels that we're using are so powerful? To the fact of how we shape our understanding of a face, right? So a very common kind of example is if we in kindergarten or in preschool a teacher says Boys and girls line up. What does that tell? Everybody that the words boys and girls or the concepts that define boys and girls are important they navigate our lives Right, but if we were to say, you know More specifically, you know Kira go stand at the front of the line, right? That's signaling that this person who is Kira We need to know her individualness of Kira and we want her to go stand in front of the line So just by using different kinds of labels again is shifting the way the brain is Processing and remembering what's important, right? And we can do that for constructs of gender. We do that with constructs of race We think about the labels that we're using to identify people greatly change These kinds of constructs and stereotypes about race if we say oh all those people or if To a three-year-old we say oh black people do this black people wear this or white people wear this kind of clothes, right? We're using a category label, but if we say Joe Where is this kind of clothes? We're individualizing it just to Joe. We're not creating a stereotype Right, so it's a great question, but I'm adding to it is experience and language. It's how we do it Yeah, I saw a hand in the back at the same time that your hand was raised in the front. Was there a question in the back? Yeah I'm just wondering like what Or what something that's like kept you pushing or kept you motivated in times of challenges and to like For you to really feel secure and where you are now like what's something that has kept you going to say that this is the Opportunity for me. This is the career and journey that I want to be on Support you're no community for me my my no committee, right? So definitely support for me is you know having friends family Who can think through with you in the process of you know the those those hard moments, right? Whether it's a decision a career decision. I actually came to you and we had a conversation a really useful one, right? Because other people can see the experience you're in in different ways that your mind can't quite capture it yet Right, and so I think that's really been a valuable Experience for me is having other people not just to say oh you can do it They raise you up but just say well, how do you think about it in this way like a reframe or you know being? Being able to kind of think creatively about that hard experience that you're having right and again Mount Holyoke Doing an honors thesis or writing you know writing a thesis very much prepares you to do your Dissertation right to do a PhD or what have you so those are yeah? I would say just having people there to help you think about the moment in a different way is really helpful. I Think about something you said you've told me I remember when we did the live stream In 2020 you talked about hope being a discipline and you say that often but I remember that I heard it at that moment probably because it was summer of 2020 and There's something about like those hard times. I remind myself of that that like life is not Easy and that's okay because we can do hard things and sometimes we learn the most about ourselves through those times I've had a journey of of weightlifting like I lift more consistent I have at different times, but like I'm consistent about it for the past five years and it has taught me so much about myself And if you think about it like with strength training, you don't always want to do it It's hard, you know, it'd be really easier just to not right But there are lessons you can learn about yourself if you push yourself under pressure When in those moments where you want to give up but actually you want the gains so you push through and so like for me the Challenging myself in other ways like I was in grad school and I thought I needed to run a marathon I don't know why I thought I needed to do that, but I actually now I do I think it was like the stretching myself of like I should go do this other challenging thing I'm doing this challenging thing over here that might sound like I have real But I say that to say what gives me that like when things are hard I remind myself that I can do hard things and I think I've seen in my life There are times where I intentionally put myself in hard things scenarios to remind myself That you can do this it's hard, but you can do this and So those people around you are important But also what you say to yourself in your own head is really important not to isolate yourself But like how do you stretch yourself and practice that there's this book? I'm called Oh, I can't I'm not going to try to remember the name But he talked about that it's a comfort crisis that we as people and our in our evolution We're really comfortable in this like 72 degree temperature climate control We don't really challenge ourselves and there's like I think it's an old Japanese tradition of misojis like going on these journeys If we think about like the Maasai where you know, right to passage you go have this big journey Either you come back with a lion or you get eaten by one or something like that That's probably not it actually but Right like the idea is that you challenge yourself You do something that you might fail at like 50% you might fail at this But you learn about yourself through that process So when I'm in those moments, I remind myself of the other times that I've come through hard things and It's also, you know, just to Be real it's ugly Like when you do hard things it can be really ugly, right? I'm in terms of like, you know the ugly crying and the like rage or whatever it is, right? It's it's not I don't want to come across this sitting here me like, oh, yeah We can do hard things and we're like you just do it, you know, it's hard. No, like it's you know, there's there's tears There's there's sweat. There's whatever and that's okay If you do it for me if I make sure I am okay to have those emotions and these extreme Experiences but doing it in a way that feels still myself and still feels healthy and you know safe And I have that community of support and things like that, right? So Yeah, it's not like a pretty process And don't let I found I have two boys and so I talked to some of their friends and I have graduate students now Right like and I will talk about as they apply for internship or go to these different points So what I'm saying is these younger folks that I've talked to I've heard some of them Articulate that the manicured nature that you see other people's lives through Instagram and other sorts of social media That it's hard for them to go through those hard things because you only see what people want you to see and so Yeah, I think that's a very important point that it doesn't always look like Everyone's life isn't what you see on Instagram and that those are hard. It's it's hard and that's okay Yes Thank you so much for being with us today and one of the dogs a good number of stories I was just wondering about how you like me decisions because like you got an offer from for being a professor I have four different like colleges. I believe and probably more you deserve all of it How do you like decide which one to do when you haven't you like taken any of the position like oh? I know how it's like being at Stanford so I can take this position But like what if you don't know anything about the environment like you you can talk to people You can understand but then there's always saying that oh, whatever people say take it with a bit greener salt Like how much how do you just go about it? Decisions are not easy for me That was a the career decision was a long like months that was a very long process. Nothing that was ever done quickly I As an extrovert talk to people I talk to everybody and I get all these different, you know pieces and Through that process I keep myself But then I just keep you know like shuffling the data points right and kind of trying to find that like Summary of like okay. This is what I'm seeing here the you know and and when we spoke We've I even wrote out like visually, you know here are the columns of the buckets of options and putting the different pieces in so You know trying to like I said for me. It's a External processing so that's a lot for me for making those decisions But you're you're the part of your question. I think is really interesting and we like to hear from you, too is this this idea of Making a decision about something or going toward something that you have no idea what it's going to be like and I'm guessing many of us in this Room have had that experience whether it's choosing to come to Mount Holyoke moving to South Hadley, Massachusetts I mean for me I grew up in Amherst, so I I knew what was going on going on I'm sure about that part, but Somebody had said to me, you know Grave faculty at in grad school. It's like you don't have to know Like if you already knew then you would already have the degree, right? So and the other thing for me is like I make a decision and I'm gonna make that decision fully and then see how it goes and Also realize like I can change that decision, right? There's always ways to say, you know turns out this wasn't the right choice Or this is the direction. I want to change right and I can still make it So I think I really and maybe that's a part of my like aversion to making decisions Is that I'm always reminding myself that I could like change the decision that I then make but I think that's a real thing, right? So, yeah, I agree and life is There's the researcher actually she's a psychologist I believe Carrie and Rockamore and she she has right so she talks about your life and chapters And so to also remember that you can fully commit and make a decision and that could be a chapter And you could decide to write another chapter. I think about that even now because I there's so much I want to talk to you about research and yet that's a piece of myself that takes up less space now because I'm doing more consulting Right and even just like making that decision to have that be a chapter And this is a smaller part of this chapter and so don't feel like you have to that This is the only decision that you have to make ever, right? It's a decision and you know a string of many and you can change You also had a question What do I do with that? How do I navigate it? How do I manage it? That's a good question I don't know. It just is I'm the only black woman I'm the first black woman to get tenure in my department in the 200 and whatever years of the institution's existence You know, I'm the only black woman in the department and I'm I don't I don't I guess I navigate it by being authentically me and I don't let it pull me down and I also Don't shy away from reminding my colleagues of the shadow mentoring and other work that I do that I happily do But that I remind them like as we make decisions around hires and other things like if we are serious about changing the dynamics, right? That means making me not the only right like that, right? And so I that's actually a great question like how do I navigate it psychologically? I don't I don't give it my energy as a negative It's simply a part of what's happening right now, and I try to navigate and be there for my students And give voice to it so that it doesn't that we don't get complacent in the fact that I'm the only I Want to piggyback on that question if I might something you said Kira prompted me to think about this Because you know you said it takes a you know it can take a lot out of you that one that was implied in your question, too And a long time ago someone said to me if you make a lot of withdrawals you better make a lot of deposits So so my question to you is both of you. How are you making deposits? Yeah, great You know to this idea of making the deposits of your question, too When I recognize that I am the only one in a certain scenario Right so one is to be bringing it up to colleagues or whomever, but I also have to Decide for myself when is it that I need to like take that on and Make be the initiator of the change, but also but or is it? Alerting somebody hey you recognize that this is you know, we don't have a balance here or not even a balance we just don't have representation and Saying okay, you have that information and it's time for you to you know step up and do it because it you cannot in my opinion you can't just Take on everything right because that takes away from yourself physically emotionally mentally But it takes away from the research for me it would take away from the babies right if I'm spending all my energy on addressing the Shortcomings of a department then I'm not actually doing the work that I want to be doing in some ways so I guess as a deposit it's saying like you identify I identify and then I Encourage somebody else to do the movement. I will support them in that But I need somebody else to kind of spearhead it right so if that's in the form of allyship it could be and Then you know the other thing that I've done That I've experienced maybe not necessarily seek it out all the time, but that I've experienced throughout my life is Having lots of different types of groups around me right so sometimes in a group where I am that only one But I'm in other spaces where I'm a part of the numeric majority Right, so you have by having that kind of mix for myself. That's giving me the different kinds of energy and deposits that I need Yeah, I would agree with that just making sure that there are spaces where that's not the burden for me and Choosing joy like so that sometimes that might mean Closing the computer and not doing work not doing that second shift of work at night or like To this week I have a lot of travel and so it was President's Day on Monday My kids were home like we went to see a movie as a family Right the choosing to make sure I make time for those people in my life that matter because there will always be work to be done Always it won't go away. So that is something that I think I don't know if I learned it at Mount Holyoke or in grad school That like you can't wrap everything up. You can't finish everything I had a supervisor in grad school tell me that work is like laundry. It'll always be there Kim Leary who is embers right right? So even if you finish all your laundry and even if you put it all up even if you're still wearing something and you're creating more, right? So if you can have that attitude towards it Like it shouldn't stress you out as much that there's still work to be done because there's still laundry But hey, you know, we'll get to it and of course I know any Mount Holyoke person in this room isn't gonna like totally shirk their duties So I can say this to you, right? Like it'll get done It'll get done and sometimes it's just important to remind yourself that and not feel like you have to wrap everything up Mm-hmm Yes In terms of your both of your research I'll let you know that from what you've said that it started a lot of this started in a more micro sense in terms of like individual fixes and changes in improvement, but as you guys are continuing your research and as you're moving into Consultancy, how do you see the potential macro? Effects that your research can have on the larger scale Yeah, I mean, I think it's a both and for me I've always had two tracks of like I do this research So that we can help people navigate discrimination and I do this consulting so we can stop discriminating because that would be the best way For people to navigate discrimination, right? It's just to stop it cut it out I mean hateful so to end all systems of oppression is the macro stuff And so I see it as a is like this both and so there's this one research product project that I've been working on that's um That's centered in black women and this idea we have in in clinical psychology This act act therapy is this idea that you can have you can get fused with ideas about who you are So I could get fused with this idea that I'm not good enough that they'll find me out that I'm an imposter and That we can use psychological intervention to create distance between self and that concept and that that can help decrease psychological distress and free you up, right and so we did this this group protocol with black women and and We're able to see that using these interventions that we created could help them Decrease their ideas of appropriated. I called appropriated racism Like so you pick up these ideas that racism tells you that sexism how to sexism tells you about who you're supposed to be And so I'm sharing that quickly to say I Do that research but then I also am called into companies to do listing sessions with black employees And I can like real-time help them name Some of the ideas and narratives that they've been told about who they are in this company in the world right and help them Disconnect and so there's a real way in which I find it's fun to be able to play in both the micro and the macro If you can allow yourself to apply what you learn in your research For me I There are a couple of ways that I kind of think about that and again still trying to establish it but one is that By having families interact with me they have their infant participate in a study It could just be this like one-off experience parents don't think much about it ever again But I want to be able to do it in a way and communicate the share back what we're You know finding in a way that maybe just a little small change right in that parents approach to maybe they go to a library events more often or they choose to You know become more aware of the labels the names that they're using right and and Yes, it's individual changes, but if we think about then larger ripple changes, right and of course it's Sometimes it feels hard because you're like oh well like that's just like one or a handful of families that you get to see that Make that change, but you know I want to think that there's still you know changes being made but the other thing is that Looking to kind of the way researchers academics interact with media for my work, you know, I look at The importance of word using different kinds of labels while I could talk to toy companies or I could talk to you know Those who are building or writing Books I have a colleague who's starting an app right and I mean now we can I think you know There's a lot more opportunity for creativity To send out into making those like larger scale changes But for me again, it's I really do think about the individual experience and changes for the families that I interact with and Given the way that the research is done right now. A lot of those families are primarily You know highly educated White families who can come in and do research in the middle of the day But you know those and those are the families that we actually want making changes So, you know, that's that's again. I'm hoping that the individual experiences kind of lead into larger changes Sharice I know that The baby research is Interesting in a lot of ways But for those who haven't really Experienced it or read about it. Could you just talk about like how do you know what a baby knows? Right Figure out something that somebody who can't verbally tell you Yeah Well in your intro you mentioned some kind of fancy-sounding words of Electroencephalography so this idea of recording brain activity Is one way that we can kind of think start to explore what's going on in a baby's mind But there are also ways that we can set up a game We were doing games, you know the idea is it for it to be fun, right? You can't get a one-year-old to do something that's not necessarily fun and As a researcher and you learn to try to control your variables, right? You control what Factors you want to change and then the factors that you need to keep constant, right? And so then we're looking for a change in behavior in a 10-minute visit Right in a 10-minute visit I want to be able to show them a picture of one kind of face and another picture of a different kind of face And I'm looking for a change in the infant's behavior to those two faces And I can do that by putting a hat a little hat on their heads and recording the brain signal That's at the scalp level or I can do that by Watching their eye movement when they see the faces and I can also do that by Seeing their motor actions. Do they choose one toy over the other? Depending on whose face is associated with that toy, right? So we as Developmentals I try to capitalize what infants can do, right? So that we know that they have preferences Right and so how do they show us preferences? They go towards something or they look longer towards something So I use those abilities to then show them faces or objects or things like that So it's it's a you know 10 10-minute experience for the infant But for me, it's like that's a massive amount of you know information to try to go back And then there's you know you go back and you watch the video of the session or things like that So, you know usually it comes to the lab, but I have ways where we can go to a daycare and Interact with infants in that capacity as well Thank you We have time maybe for one or two more questions and I want to invite faculty members I know you've got a lot of faculty members who've been deferring to students and that was appropriate But in these few minutes if there are any of our faculty members who want to ask a question of our psych ed graduates feel free Yes, go for it. It's so nice to hear you saying so many things. I needed to hear today Oh good. I can at the department in this area But as I most of the work is in education and so I'm thinking a lot about myself as an educator and How to have how much pressure is too much pressure on students? What was How did the ways of what your faculty pushed you? How did that help you and what are the things we shouldn't be doing? What's helpful Your point about Malheuil challenging you I got my first B-minus here. It was devastating It's devastating to my ego, but Linda Morgan it was a African-american It was so important it was so important and I was like well why and you told me all the reasons why and That was so important to me because I had not like the I Could have a we could have a whole conversation after this about why I think this could have happened But I'll fast forward I had students in my class in particular was one young black man that I remember who had the guts to come To me and say Dr. Banks are you being harder on us because we're black? There's some of us who think you are and I said no I'm sorry if someone never took the time to tell you what needed to improve in your writing But this is what I expect from everyone and this is what you need to improve in your writing And it was because of you and because the way that I was pushed and like sure it's good enough But you can do better right like where's I'm more and more evidence so that was that's important And that's hard as a faculty member because that feedback takes time And I tell my students that feedback is a gift of my time and so really I hope you hear it Like it really it's easier to grade good papers than heart and then paper And so keep doing that Give the feedback even when they we didn't we weren't happy about it That's what all that's where I'll start Yeah, I mean tough feedback amber Many many of those conversations they raised up, you know get get going here on your writing, right? So I mean those are that's those are the important things and so doing it in a way that says like it The message was you can do this and you need to So figure it out like you need to do this and then And I know that one of the kind of questions that maybe you were had thinking about was like people that were impactful or inspiring, but In the same kind of idea what you're asking about like things to do is to also Go to a student and identify when they are really Succeeding right when they're doing things that you are excited about and Lucas did that in my first year at Mount Holyoke and In his course and you know, I was at office hours and you know He's really communicated like that in this particular paper that I wrote I was really crossing all the t's dotting the eyes and in a way that was exciting to him That was very clear to me that how excited he was about the things that I was saying or writing and in that conversation Also, he had said, you know, I want a student like you to come back and teach at Mount Holyoke now in that moment I was like no, I Don't know what my face did, but I don't have a poker face. So it's probably did something like Right So, you know and but don't listen to your 18 year old self I guess and That message has stuck with me You know, I went to grad school and I didn't again. I didn't really think I was going to go into academia I really like did not go to grad school to become a professor I just went because it was an opportunity to do something hard. I guess but You know, I am I'm but I am now in academia and I didn't come back to Mount Holyoke yet But you know, it's a message that has really Yeah, I mean The hiring committee But it was a message that still I mean from 2004 and now it really stuck with me We have a vote over here So I know that we probably should wrap so that we can continue our conversation Informally over our dinner, which we'll be waiting for us soon, but I want to just ask at this as we close What advice you have, you know for your younger self you've been giving a lot of advice already, but if you could You know in 25 words or less What would you share? Or something that you haven't already talked about that you think I Can't leave here without also saying this Many of you think of like I said this doing hard things but finding moments to do silly things and to just laugh and breathe and Kind of wait ride these different emotional waves that we have I think is something and I don't know if it's necessarily don't take yourself too seriously, but Laugh and enjoy and find that kind of happiness and lightness. I think I wish I had Done more of that while doing hard things. I Agree don't wait until To have fun to have joy Have it while you're doing those hard things I would agree and the other thing I'd say is the hard work pays off You might not be able to see it today, but I was sharing with you I was in a consultation about a about a scene and They were talking about kind of African diasporic They were doing a scene and and they were talking about what food was going to be at the table for the ancestors Right and and it was only because of all the different classes that I had a mouth Holyoke and the reading that I do broadly that in the moment as a cultural consultant I could say no to this yes to that and So like that's pulling out stuff from the recesses of my brain that some people would have to go research But it's so like the reading that you're doing in a class. It's not your major so get in get excited about it It pays off it'll feed you in a way that you can't know now But like all of that knowledge is worth it and it's important Yes, please join me in thanking our two fabulous