As an educator, I provide my students with a multi-dimensional and multi-tiered learning experience that hinges upon three understandings:

first, that their learning is a marriage between knowledge and application;

second, that their efficacy as a student is inextricably married to their own personal development and understanding of self;

& finally, the hallmark of a superior learner is the application of critical and creative thinking towards all facets of their educational experience.

My students are students first, so their personal development—their understanding of their own growth and learning—is pivotal in being able to derive pertinent, applicable illustrations. This is best supported through Baxter-Magolda’s (2001) self-authorship model, with which I infuse components of Schlossberg’s (1995) transition theory, and Kolb’s (1984) theory of experiential learning.

In my teaching philosophy, my role as their teacher is to provide multiple opportunities for self-reflection, coupled with a critical evaluation of both their own challenges and developments. Baxter-Magolda (2001) serves as my foundation for this role, by creating moments of salient meaning making. My contribution to the learning process is to create moments where they challenge what they know, admit what they don’t and give themselves space to attempt both. My role as their teacher is to investigate their passions and strengths, and build opportunities for my students to advance their own self-efficacy through practice.

As a teacher, and as a mentor, I believe in confrontation as a means of social change. I believe that requiring those students we teach and mentor to effectively manage the challenging of their beliefs and values leads to either one or both optimal outcomes: we either push students to dig into their values, and to fortify what they believe to be true and right; or we challenge students to face the values that they discover are incongruous with their true beliefs, and we support them through the transition toward higher action-value congruence.

My role is to encourage them as global and community citizens to be active voices and contributors to the environments and contexts they inhabit. As members of those multiple communities, they will be tasked with maintaining the communal values that resonate with their own values, or dismantling those communal values that are diverge from the stated and lived values they espouse.

I do this through an execution of Sanford’s (1967) challenge and support paradigm. I am both the coach, and the cheerleader. I am not the quarterback; it is not my down to play, not my uniform to wear, not my win to celebrate. It is through strategy, motivation and discipline that I create moments for others to push themselves to victory; move as members of a whole toward a shared, common goal.

In my professional research, I focus specifically on residential leadership roles, as well as on the leadership training and identity development of residence life student staff, specifically resident assistants and graduate assistants, via their training programs, both formal and informal.

In a field of practitioners, there is a need for exploration of the program philosophy, assessment protocol and overall leadership development model, and how those three concepts converge to adequately train student staff members. Because resident assistant training includes human resource, student development and student learning components, in order to adequately assess the program’s effectiveness, vitality and growth, one must employ a multi-tier and diverse approach to assessing and understanding the overall training’s solvency.

In my professional research, I focus on the experience of black professional staff members in leadership roles in higher education, including both student affairs and diversity, equity & inclusion fields, specifically black women/womxn/womyn & femmes, in mid/senior professional roles.

The role that black professionals have occupied in the administrative fields has both a unique and contradictory narrative. This narrative, very often ignored, or focused solely on the student experience, requires additional research and investigation. Because this is a relatively young vein of study, with less than 50 years of limited and isolated inquiry, there is a need on both a practitioner and scholastic level for a more in-depth exploration of this experience, and how it both contributes and defines the student learning and overall experience at institutions of higher learning.

My work as an educator, as a leader and as a global citizen are grounded in several, irrefutable principles. I am guided in my work by the concepts of Ubuntu and Sankofa. I am anchored in my professional viewpoint by Social Change Theory. It is from those principles that I seek to approach all justice, equity, diversity and inclusion work. It is with those concepts that I seek the space in which students can find belonging.

As a professional, I utilize Coser’s (1957) social conflict theory as a means to interrogate and dismantle ignorance and inherent distrust of social change as a means to advance and progress systems and models of being. As characterized by Marx via Coser (1957), conflict requires the total social system to undergo radical transformation, as nothing that examine itself can remain unmoved. Via social conflict, we experience innumerable opportunities to create change: transformational, radical, revolutionary, systemic, continuous, top-down and bottom-up.

In my work, I try to always provides structured inquiry, as a means of supportive engagement. This is best done through utilizing the Four Levels of Action, best communicated by the Pachamama Alliance (2020), which specifically address our locus(es) of control. Within the four levels, there is: 1- individual, 2- friends and family, 3- community and institutions and 4- economic and policy.

As a practitioner, my professional and scholastic efforts are framed in the twin pillars of Ubuntu and Sankofa. I am a product of the pioneering work of those before me- those who were sacrificed to environments that lacked equity, clarity and integrity; those whose efforts and intellectual property were stolen, appropriated and homogenized to remove even the mention of their existence; those who readily accepted being the firsts and the “onlies”, aware of what it could provide to those who came after.

Sankofa, to go back and get it, expressly focuses on making meaning of the past- both the successes and the failures. It prioritizes an understanding of influences and history. It serves in providing a narrative that extends beyond one lifetime, one person, one movement. In JEDI work, Sankofa ensures that we are progressive in our work, that we understand movements and history as a method of education and inspiration. Sankofa ensures that we are cohesive and accurate, even in the deconstruction of our own biases.

Ubuntu, I am because we are, speaks to the one-ness of humanity, and the responsibility to step forward into a future that is more illustrative and incorporative of justice. Stepping into a JEDI practice with a focus on intentionality means that we own the ways in which our liberation is inextricably bound together. It requires forward thinking and revolutionary creativity to fashion a concept of the future that removes barriers, that reimagines opportunity, and that redistributes power. It challenges us to challenge ourselves and the structures to which we align and subscribe power, all within the context of relationships.

In order for social confrontation and social change via conflict to hold meaning, it must be constructed in environments build upon relational structures, and it must focus on the value versus the individual that holds them. It is the environment and the existence of civil discourse that provide the opportunity for social confrontation of ideas and not individuals. Through those efforts, we able to create belonging for individuals- the nexus of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion- in a way that encourages welcoming and engagement in myriad ways. Since the currency of our work is relationships, the ideal outcome can only be to create a space where the ultimate product is belonging.

As a leader, I believe that in our roles- in this work- our currency is relationships. How we lead, how we create change, how we inspire growth, all exists and is supported and translated through the framework of relationships. With relationships as my focal point, I employ a number of measures across teams, including authentic and radical candor, talent acquisition and management, and self-determination and self-authorship. 

For student staff including graduate students, I frame the relationship with components of Sanford's (1962) challenge and support model, as it provides the opportunity to individualize resources and opportunities, while also ensuring consistency and trust.

For new professionals including support staff, I to utilize directed collaborative leadership in tandem with Schlossberg's (1995) transition theory. This places the learning and growth within the control of the new professional, providing them with perspective from their own experience, and strengthening the relationship as a whole.

For mid-level professional staff including support staff, I utilize Baxter-Magolda's (2001) self-authorship, in tandem with Tuckman's (1965) group development theory, as a means to provide advisement, mentoring and tailored professional development. This provides autonomy, group governance and interdependent relational cohesion across the professional spectrum and throughout the team.

In leading a team, I think it is essential to always reflect authentic self-awareness, group responsibility, self-determination and change management. This approach, coupled with Tuckman's (1965) group development theory to create cohesion as a group, create relationships that extend beyond roles and transactions, and provide shared experiences in which to develop trust, care and concern.

Through that framework and from those relationships, a culture of inclusive care is established and prioritized, and from that, we are able to lead as holistic humans with compassion, truth and authenticity.