Jill Grose-Fifer – PEDAGOGY DAY

Opening Remarks: Pearis Bellamy, M.S., University of Florida

Pearis Bellamy, M.S. is a third-year counseling psychology doctoral student at the University of Florida. Pearis’ research interests include trauma specifically intimate partner violence, sexual violence, and racial trauma. She is a proud HBCU alumna and hopes to be an HBCU professor. As a Black doctoral student studying and experiencing racial trauma, Pearis dreamed up Academics for Black Lives, alongside her mentor, Dr. Della Mosley, in hopes of providing healing and support for Black people through collective action in academia.

Pearis will also be leading a workshop with her co-facilitator, Victoria McNeil-Young.

Other Workshop Leaders

Kevin Nadal, Ph.D., John Jay College and The Graduate Center, CUNY

Kevin Leo Yabut Nadal, Ph.D. is a Professor of Psychology at both John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center (GC) at the City University of New York (CUNY). He was the first openly gay president of the Asian American Psychological Association (AAPA) and the first Executive Director of color of the CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies at CUNY. Within AAPA, he co-founded the Division on Filipino Americans and the Division on LGBTQ Issues. He is a National Trustee of the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS) and a cofounder of the LGBTQ Scholars of Color Network. He received Bachelor’s Degrees in Psychology and Political Science from the University of California at Irvine; a Master’s Degree in Counseling from Michigan State University; and a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Teachers College – Columbia University. He is the author of over 100 publications and 10 books, including Filipino American Psychology: A Handbook of Theory, Research, and Clinical Practice(2011, John Wiley and Sons), That’s So Gay: Microaggressions and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community (2013, APA Books), Sage Encyclopedia of Psychology and Gender(2017, Sage), and Microaggressions and Traumatic Stress(2018, American Psychological Association). A scholar-activist, he has written for Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, andthe New York Times, and he has appeared on numerous media outlets including NBC, CBS, PBS, The History Channel, Fox News, The Weather Channel, and People magazine. In 2017, he received the American Psychological Association Early Career Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest.

Michelle Fine, Ph.D., The Graduate Center, CUNY

Michelle Fine is a Distinguished Professor of Critical Psychology, Women’s Studies, American Studies and Urban Education at the Graduate Center, CUNY and founding faculty member of The Public Science Project. Fine taught at the University of Pennsylvania from 1981 – 1991, and then came to the Graduate Center. She has served as an expert witness in a range of educational , racial and gender justice class action lawsuits including girls suing for access to Central High School in Philadelphia and The Citadel in South Carolina, students of color suing for racial equity in Wedowee Alabama, youth fighting for equitable financing and facilities in Williams v. State of California, and most recently a finance inequity lawsuit for the children of Baltimore. She has authored many “classics” – books and articles on high school push outs, adolescent sexuality – called the “missing discourse of desire,” the national evaluation of the impact of college in prison, the struggles and strength of the children of incarcerated adults, the wisdom of Muslim American youth. Fine has been recognized with a range of awards from Stanford University and Teachers College Columbia, the American Psychological Association and the American Educational Research Association

Loren Cahill, The Graduate Center, CUNY

Loren S. Cahill is a doctoral candidate at the City of New York’s Graduate Center’s Critical Social/Personality and Environmental Psychology program. Her current research interests include Black Girlhood Studies, Black Feminist Geographies, and Womanist Futurities. She is a recent Schomburg Dissertation Fellow and Provost Enhanced Fellow.

Roderick Hurley, The Graduate Center, CUNY

Rod Hurley is a 4th year doctoral student in Critical Social/Personality Psychology and an adjunct lecturer at the College of Staten Island. He is also a musician and music producer, who has worked in advocacy for intellectual property rights for independent music artists in the Eastern Caribbean. Rod studies the role of music in social movements, community building, and identity development.

Chris Hoffman, The Graduate Center, CUNY

Chris Hoffman (he/him/is) is a dual doctoral student in the Environmental and Critical Social Psychology programs at the CUNY Graduate Center. Chris currently teaches environmental psychology and queer psychology as an adjunct lecturer at City College. Chris’s work focuses on using participatory epistemology both in research and education to work communities.

Emese Ilyes, Ph.D., The Graduate Center, CUNY

Emese Ilyes completed her dissertation, “Social Production of Intellectual Disability and the Mechanics of Moral Exclusion: Past, Present, and Future”, for her PhD in the Critical Social Personality program at The Graduate Center. She is the lead researcher on an economic justice study, housed within the Public Science Project at The Graduate Center, investigating the importance of a social contract rooted in unconditional belonging and trust.

Richard Clark, The Graduate Center, CUNY

Richard C. Clark (they/she) is a doctoral student in the Critical Social Personality Psychology Program at the Graduate Center CUNY. Richard is a researcher in social psychology that specializes in critical discourse analysis. Currently, they are finishing a project that looks at how LGBTQ youth are contending with whiteness and white privilege.

Yvette deChavez, Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin

Dr. DeChavez is a Latinx writer, artist, and educator from San Antonio, Texas. A first-generation college graduate, she earned a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, studying contemporary BIPOC literature and performance. Her work focuses on incorporating decolonial and anti-racist pedagogy in academia. Before graduate school, she worked for the Macondo Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded by Chicana author Sandra Cisneros that brings together writers committed to social change. She currently works at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas.

Sarah AlSaidi, M.A., Ed.M., Teachers College, Columbia University

Sarah Alsaidi earns her PhD in Counseling Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University in 2021. Her research focuses on identity, microaggressions and microintervention response strategies for people of color and allies. Sarah utilizes an intersectional, feminist and social justice approach that integrates her clinical background and research. She is driven by her desire to live by these principles and values and believes in the sharing of power, self-disclosures, and active interventions. Sarah has several years of experience facilitating workshops and trainings in educational and organizational settings. She has played an integral role in the development of mental health awareness campaigns and programming in the community, initiatives centering the experiences of women of color and access to education, as well as teaching anti-bias microintervention strategies in education, hospital and social service settings.

Victoria McNeil-Young, M.S., University of Florida

Victoria McNeil-Young is a doctoral candidate in the Counseling Psychology program at the University of Florida. She identifies as a Black, cisgender, straight woman, and her pronouns are she/her/hers. Prior to pursuing her doctorate, she received her bachelor’s degree in psychology and African American studies from the University of Florida and completed master’s coursework in clinical mental health counseling at the University of Central Florida. She is currently completing her pre-doctoral internship at the University of Maryland College Park’s Counseling Center and her research interests include liberation psychology and the mental and physical health impacts of racism related stress on the well-being of marginalized groups, specifically Black women. Her dissertation examined the impact of shifting, and gendered racial-ethnic socialization on the well-being of Black women.