I am a Black Girlhood Scholar.

I come from a long tradition of scholars—based in the academy, my mama’s kitchen, hair braiding salons, and beyond.

I study how colorism - a skin tone stratification system privileging lighter-skinned people of color with more proximity to European features over their darker-skinned counterparts–impacts mental health, sexual health, and system involvement among Black women and girls.

Broadly, my goal is to address the following research aims through a variety of methods rooted in critical community engagement: 

1. Measuring Colorism: Establish how, where, and how often Black girls experience colorism. 

2. Map the Impact of Colorism on the Developmental Trajectories of Black girls: How does colorism impact Black girls’ mental health outcomes, sexual health risk, and system involvement? 

3. Colorism, Trauma, and (un)Protection: Test how colorism impacts system-level and institutional responses to Black girl survivors of interpersonal violence.  

4. Colorism Interventions: develop community-level interventions to mitigate and disrupt the impact of colorism on Black girls’ life outcomes.