I am a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland. I hold a PhD in Sociology from the University of South Florida.

 

My research interests include the social psychology of race and racism, intersectionality, labor, and social mobility. My methodological interests include qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method methodologies.

 

My research agenda is to advance scholarship that focuses on how systemic and structural racism influence gendered expectations. Specifically, I aim to develop a better understanding of how race and gender as status hierarchies are challenged, reinforced, and maintained in social interaction.

 

My dissertation, “Palatable Shades of Gender: Status Processes at the Intersections of Race, Appearance, and Team Formation,” merges expectation states theory with critical race theory to understand how race and gender influence a person’s  decision-making when selecting candidates as potential teammates for a problem-solving group task.

 

Moreover, my dissertation tests a theoretical framework developed in my co-authored manuscript, “Red, White, Yellow, Blue, All Out but You: An Expectation States Theory of Teammate Selection,” published in Social Psychology Quarterly.

 

I was born and raised in Austin, Texas but currently reside in Tampa, Florida. Prior to pursuing my PhD studies at USF, I was a Barbara Jordan Health Policy Fellow for the Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington, DC. I have a bachelors degree in healthcare administration and a masters in sociology. 

 

I find the synergies between public policy, research, and service-learning to be a rich, engaging, and constant endeavor. To that end, for many social justice events, I speak on panels where transgressive dialogues on racism invigorate research’s potential to transform discriminatory policies, to policies fostering equality and fairness.

 

In my free time, I enjoy broadcast journalism, television dramas and reading various literary works.