Meet The Team
Rachel Godsil is the Founder and Partner of Perception Strategies. She collaborates with social scientists on empirical research to identify the efficacy of interventions to address implicit bias, identity anxiety, and stereotype threat. She regularly leads workshops and presentations addressing the role of bias and anxiety associated with race, ethnicity, religion, and gender, focusing on education, criminal justice, health care, and the work place.
Rachel is a lead author of the Perception Institute reports including PopJustice Volume 3: Pop Culture, Perceptions, and Social Change (2016): The Science of Equality Volume 1: Addressing Implicit Bias, Racial Anxiety, and Stereotype Threat in Education and Healthcare (Perception Institute, 2014) as well as articles and book chapters such as: The Moral Ecology of Policing: A Mind Science Approach to Race and Policing in the United States in The Routledge Handbook of Criminal Justice Ethics (2016) (co-authored with Phillip Atiba Goff); Why Race Matters in Physics Class, 64 U.C.L.A. L. Rev. Disc. 40 (2016); Race, Ethnicity, and Place Identity: Implicit Bias and Competing Belief Systems, 37 Hawaii L. Rev. 313 (2015); Implicit Bias in the Courtroom, 59 U.C.L.A. L. Rev. 1184 (2012) (co-authored with Jerry Kang et al); A Tale of Two Neighborhoods: Implicit Bias in Environmental Decision-Making, in Implicit Racial Bias in the Law (Cambridge University Press, 2011). She also co-authored amicus briefs on behalf of empirical social psychologists in both iterations of Fisher v. Texasand the National Parent Teacher Association in the Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District litigation at the Supreme Court.
Rachel is on the advisory boards for Research, Integration, Strategies, and Evaluation (RISE) for Boys and Men of Color at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education, The Systemic Justice Project at Harvard Law School, and the Poverty and Race Research Action Council.
In addition to her role with the Perception Institute, Rachel is a Professor of Law and Chancellor’s Scholar at Rutgers Law School. As her research focuses on applying insights from the mind sciences to race, law, and public policy. She is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on implicit bias and race, and was co-editor for Awakening From the Dream: Civil Rights Under Siege and the New Struggle for Equal Justice (Carolina Academic Press, 2005). Her teaching and research interests include civil rights, constitutional law, property, land use, environmental justice, and education.
Her recent property work focuses on gentrification, the mortgage crisis and eminent domain, as well as the intersection of race, poverty, and land use decisions. Rachel served as Chair of the New York City Rent Guidelines Board in 2014 and 2015. After serving as the convener for the Obama campaign’s Urban and Metropolitan Policy Committee and an advisor to the Department of Housing and Urban Development transition team, Professor Godsil co-directed a report to HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan entitled “Retooling HUD for a Catalytic Federal Government.”
During law school, Rachel served as the Executive Article Editor of the Michigan Law Review, was awarded the Henry M. Bates Memorial Award, and elected to the Order of the Coif. After graduation, she clerked for John M. Walker of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Professor Godsil was an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. She was an Associate Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, focusing on environmental justice, as well as an associate with Berle, Kass & Case and Arnold & Porter in New York City.
Previously, Rachel was Eleanor Bontecou Professor of Law at Seton Hall University Law School. She joined the School of Law in 2000 and was recognized for her teaching by being nominated for Professor of the Year in 2011, 2002 and 2003. In 2003-2004, she was awarded the Researcher of the Year in Law by Seton Hall University. During fall of 2007, Professor Godsil was a Visiting Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and she taught property at New York University Law School in spring 2009.
Rachel Godsil
Co-Founding Partner
Jennifer Dworkin is a documentary filmmaker whose work includes the feature film Love & Diane which premiered at the New York Film Festival and went on to Sundance and other international festivals. It was awarded an Independent Spirit Award and other awards and went on to a theatrical release and broadcast on PBS and BBC. The film is now used in law schools, social work programs and by child welfare agencies in many parts of the country. Her films also include Homeless in the Shadows of Santa Barbara’s Mansions, produced by The Economic Hardship Reporting Project was shown on The Nation and Bill Moyer’s and by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in televised town hall meeting on inequality. As well as her independent work Jennifer directed community outreach films for Obama campaign 2012. More recently she has worked with Perception Institute on several video projects among them training films for New York State Courts and the National Association of Realtors.
Jennifer founded and ran a program for children living in shelters in New York as well as teaching filmmaking for court-involved youth and youth in foster-care. She was a Visiting lecturer in the humanities, Bard College and has edited several books most recently Break ‘Em Up by Zephyr Teachout.
Jennifer attended Harvard College and holds a MA in Philosophy and Cognitive Studies from Cornell University where she was a PhD candidate before leaving to make her first film.
Jennifer Dworkin
Director of Multimedia Content
Julie Shore
Project Manager
Afua Addo is Deputy Director of Programs & Training with the Perception Institute and a justice and trauma informed consultant who formerly served as the Manager of Gender & Family Justice Initiatives at the Center for Court Innovation where she oversaw strategy, training and technical assistance for New York State Human Trafficking Intervention Courts; NYC Human Trafficking Intervention Court Service Provision Task Force; and served on the NY State Fatality Review Board and Close Rikers Initiative: Women & Girls Off Rikers. In tandem she operated Project SAFE (Services and Fundamental Enhancements) addressing the needs of system-involved Black women with histories of domestic violence and/or sexual assault through the U.S. Dept. of Justice Office on Violence Against Women. In 2017, Addo joined the fourth cycle of Move to End Violence, a program of the NoVo Foundation, uniting leaders working across the intersections of powerful movements to end violence against girls and women. That same year Addo was selected by Essence Magazine as one of the inaugural Woke100 blazing trails to achieve equity for people of color.
In 2015, Addo joined The White House roundtable on the Impact of Mandatory Minimums on Survivors; Exploring the Impact of Criminalizing Policies on Black Women and Girls; and the White House roundtable on Girls of Color and Intervening Public Systems: Interrupting the Sex Abuse to Prison Pipeline. She implemented the Hidden Victims Project at Queens Criminal Court in early 2015, incorporating trauma and justice informed responses to survivors of gender-based violence and criminalization. Queens operates the largest Human Trafficking Intervention Court on the east coast and Addo provided training and technical assistance to national jurisdictions, including USVI and Department of Homeland Security, NYS Court Officers Academy and a host of judicial and legal stakeholders, direct service personnel and agencies.
As Coordinator of the Court Advocacy Division, Addo began direct court advocacy and alternatives to incarceration at GEMS (Girls Educational & Mentoring Services) for girls and young women victims of domestic sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation during a rise in prostitution-related arrests before launching court-based projects. Addo began her career in healthcare administration and human resource strategic planning with NYC Health & Hospitals Corporation and divided her early career between pursuing art as a professional vocal/performance artist. She currently serves as a consultant with A Call to Men, V-Day, Women’s Prison Association and the Southern Poverty Law Center and serves on the board of Girls for Gender Equity. Addo received her master’s in Mental Health Counseling, Pastoral Counseling & Spiritual Care from Fordham University and graduated from the University of Virginia. She is proudly from Brooklyn, NY.
Afua Addo
Sandra (Chap) Chapman, Ed. D. is the Founder of Chap Equity, an organization rooted in the belief that, through teamwork, we can learn more about ourselves and others; discuss and discover the foundational research needed to address the needs in a community; create conversations that support individuals where they are and confront barrier issues; and create actionable steps towards building stronger educational communities. Chap facilitates workshops on racial identity development, racial microaggressions, implicit bias, identity / racial anxiety, stereotype threat, and hiring in education and with teams in various types of organizations. Embedded within each concept are tools for helping individuals override unconscious phenomena linked to identity and better connect behavior with values.
Dr. Chap is the lead on Social Identity Development for the Great First Eight curriculum development project, led by Dr. Nell K. Duke Executive Director, Center for Early Literacy Success at Stand for Children. Great First Eight is a full-day, open educational resource (OER) curriculum for children birth through eight. This project-based curriculum is designed to integrate all disciplines, prioritizing science and social studies to an unprecedented degree for the infant through primary grades, and to support educators in enacting culturally relevant pedagogy. In addition to creating units for the Infant and Toddler team, Dr. Chap created the professional learning modules on identity and positionality for all educators using the program. Dr. Chap currently serves on the Pre-School team and has maintained her role as Lead on Social Identity Development. To learn more about the Great First Eight Curriculum, visit GreatFirstEight.org. In addition, Dr. Chap serves as a partner for Perception Strategies, where she identifies opportunities to translate the mind sciences and other essential concepts into interactive workshops that build the capacity for clients to shift their mindsets and transform their organizations.
Dr. Chap served on the faculty of the National Association of Independent Schools Diversity Leadership Institute for nine years. During this week-long residential institute she facilitated conversations on racial identity development and racial microaggressions. Chap was the Director of Equity and Community at the Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School (LREI) for 13 years. In her role at LREI she worked on issues related to equity, diversity, social justice, inclusion and anti-bias curriculum. In addition to her years at LREI, Chap has worked at Manhattan Country School and the Bank Street School for Children, all independent schools in New York City. With 30 years in NYC independent schools, and a lifetime of personal experiences in school and other not-for-profit organizations across the country, Chap has a broad range of knowledge regarding children and their social, cognitive, physical, spiritual and emotional selves, as well as the role loving adults play in children’s lives.
Dr. Chap is the co-author of Bias Starts Early. Let's Start Now: Developing an Anti-Racist, Anti-Bias Book Collection for Infants and Toddlers, co-author of Black Girl on the Playground (Teaching Beautiful Brilliant Black Girls, Corwin Press, 2021) and primary author of The Power of Conversation, an article in NAIS Magazine (Summer 2014). Chap co-created the slogan, You Get What You Get and You Don’t Get Upset, Unless It’s Unjust, Then Let’s Make a Fuss!, a child-centered slogan for inspiring young activists.
Sandra (Chap) Chapman
Jerry Kang is Distinguished Professor of Law, Distinguished Professor of Asian American Studies, and was the inaugural Korea Times – Hankook Ilbo Endowed Chair in Korean American Studies and Law (2010-20). He recently stepped down as UCLA’s Founding Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (2015-20) after completing a five year mission to “build equity for all.”
Professor Kang’s teaching and research interests include civil procedure, race, and communications. On race, he has focused on the nexus between implicit bias and the law, with the goal of advancing a “behavioral realism” in legal analysis. He regularly collaborates with leading experimental social psychologists on wide-ranging scholarly, educational, and advocacy projects. He also lectures broadly to lawyers, judges, government agencies, and corporations about implicit bias and how to counter them.
An expert on Asian American communities, he has written about hate crimes, affirmative action, the Japanese American internment, and its lessons for the “War on Terror.” He is a co-author of Race, Rights, and Reparation: The Law and the Japanese American Internment (2d ed. Wolters Kluwer 2013).
On communications, Professor Kang has published on the topics of privacy, net neutrality, pervasive computing, mass media policy, and cyber-race (the construction of race in cyberspace). He is also the author of Communications Law & Policy: Cases and Materials (7th edition 2020), a leading casebook in the field.
During law school, Professor Kang was a Supervising Editor of the Harvard Law Review and Special Assistant to Harvard University’s Advisory Committee on Free Speech. After graduation, he clerked for Judge William A. Norris of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, then worked at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration on cyberspace policy.
He joined UCLA in Fall 1995 and has been recognized for his teaching by being elected Professor of the Year in 1998; receiving the law school’s Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2007; and being chosen for the highest university-wide distinction, the University Distinguished Teaching Award (The Eby Award for the Art of Teaching) in 2010. At UCLA School of Law, he was founding co-Director of the Concentration for Critical Race Studies as well as PULSE: Program on Understanding Law, Science, and Evidence. Prof. Kang has taught at Harvard and Georgetown law schools, and was the David M. Friedman Fellow at NYU’s Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law & Justice.
Prof. Kang is a member of the American Law Institute, has chaired the American Association of Law School’s Section on Defamation and Privacy, has served on the Board of Directors of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. He has received numerous awards, including Vice President Al Gore’s “Hammer Award” for Reinventing Government and the American Association of Law School’s Clyde Ferguson Award.
Jerry Kang
Aya Taveras is the Director of Story and Representation at Perception Institute. Aya develops new program content to support learning and development, and facilitates mind science workshops on implicit bias, identity anxiety, and stereotype threat. She has worked in the public and private sectors, with domestic and international leadership, managers, and staff, facilitating ongoing institutional development as well as individual workshops. She also engages in individual coaching as part of post-workshop support.
Aya has also led Perception’s work in the media and culture context, developing original on-line content, assessing the efficacy of media campaigns through a mind-science lens, and providing content advice for innovative AI work in the field.
Early in her career, Aya taught 6-8th grade English Language Arts in Brooklyn and Washington Heights, before moving into strategic work in the education equity landscape. Prior to joining Perception, she worked in education advocacy, seeking to elevate the voices of teachers who identify as women of color, and supported program expansion at Girls Who Code.
A native New Yorker, Aya is driven to the mind sciences as a function of her own experiences as a student in New York City and at Middlebury College, where she was one of very few women of color. She is compelled and committed to using her expertise to ensure that organizations and institutions learn to grapple effectively with identity difference to ensure belonging for all. Aya has a M.A.T. from the Relay Graduate School of Education, and B.A. in International Studies: Political Science and Latin American Studies from Middlebury College. Aya is based in New York, NY.
Aya Taveras
Core Team
Jason Craige Harris is a voice for healing, transformation, and the power of storytelling. He brings together insights from diverse fields as a facilitator, conflict mediator, leadership coach, and spiritual teacher. He works in a variety of contexts, with a range of constituents, and across industries to promote cultures of dignity, belonging, and repair. He regularly advises leaders on how to solve big challenges, manage complex crises, and pursue lasting change.
As a researcher, educator, and strategist, Jason holds expertise in organizational development; dignity and belonging; dialogue and group dynamics; the psychology of identity and leadership; and conflict transformation and restorative justice. In all of his work, Jason draws on a deep well of research, practice, and mindfulness to transform leaders, teams, and organizational cultures.
Jason is the Managing Partner at Perception Strategies, a consulting firm working at the intersection of leadership, strategy, culture, and resolution––of crises and conflicts. Jason also serves as a Senior Advisor at Perception Institute, a research consortium prioritizing equity in social systems. In addition, Jason is a member of the speakers bureau at Pollyanna, a national organization working to promote racial literacy and cultural competency.
Jason is the author of the following pieces: “The Paradox of Isolation” (Friends Journal), “Between Love and Truth––Navigating Racial Conflict Using Restorative Justice” (CSEE), and “Black or Bruised” (AMBO). He is also the Social Impact Producer for a new documentary with Impactful entitled Race to Be Human, a film on how to talk about race and mental health.
Previously, Jason was the director of diversity and inclusion at a NYC independent school, where he co-led the school’s peace, equity, and justice department, and taught courses at the intersection of ethics, history, and religion. Jason sits on the boards of Seeds of Peace, Hidden Water, and Getting to We.
Jason Craige Harris
Managing Partner
Jakita Miller
Director of Operations
Rebecca Willett is the Chief Operating Officer at Perception. With 15 years of experience leading tech programs for social justice organizations, Rebecca has a passion for organizational capacity and team-building. Her focus at Perception is to structure the organization’s work with clients and manage internal resources to ensure effective and timely project completion.
Prior to joining Perception, Rebecca worked at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America for ten years, where she helped to build and lead a nationwide digital tech program that currently reaches 120 million young people in the U.S. each year.
Rebecca holds a B.A. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California at Berkeley. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Rebecca lives in Oakland.
Rebecca Willett
Chief Operating Officer
Network of Collaborators
Anurima Bhargava is the President of Anthem of Us, a strategic advisory firm promoting dignity and justice in the building of our schools, workplaces and communities. She conducts investigations of harassment and discrimination, assesses institutional culture and climate, and makes policy and practice recommendations.
From 2010-2016, Anurima led federal civil rights enforcement in schools and institutions of higher education at the U.S. Department of Justice. She managed groundbreaking litigation and policy guidance to address school segregation; sexual assault and harassment; religious discrimination and harassment; school discipline and policing; and the protection of educational access and services for students with disabilities, English Learners, LGBTQ and undocumented students. Anurima previously directed the education practice at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and served as counsel to the New York City Department of Education.
In December 2018, Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed Anurima U.S. Commissioner on International Religious Freedom. From 2016-2018, she served as a fellow at the Open Society Foundations, where her work was focused on addressing the trauma that children experience after incidents of racial violence. In 2017, she was named a Presidential Leadership Scholar. In 2016, she served as a fellow at the Institute of Politics and the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard.
Bhargava currently chairs the board of Doc Society and the National Advisory Board for Public Service and serves as a senior advisor to several think tanks and foundations. She also regularly advises and produces documentary films. Bhargava grew up on the south side of Chicago, where she currently resides.
Anurima Bhargava
Michelle DePass began her career as a community organizer in New York and went onto leadership positions in philanthropy, government, academia and the nonprofit sector. Over three decades, she has distinguished herself as a thought leader at the intersections of social and economic justice, community organizing and political strategy, and progressive philanthropy and academia.
Most recently as the president and chief executive officer of the billion dollar plus Meyer Memorial Trust, she ushered in a new mission and vision for racial, economic and social justice. During her tenure, Meyer launched its largest initiative to date, the 25 million dollar program, Justice Oregon for Black Lives.
She is known as a leader who brings people together, encourages problem solving and makes a meaningful difference for underserved communities and beyond. She is particularly passionate about social, economic and environmental justice for people of color, women, indigenous peoples and low-income communities.
Each step along DePass’ professional journey has lent fresh insights into entrenched injustices across a broad spectrum of sectors — and honed her conviction to overcome them. As a civil rights lawyer, she litigated racial discrimination and human rights violations at the Center for Constitutional Rights. As a Senate-confirmed presidential appointee in the Obama administration, she oversaw a $120 million budget at the Environmental Protection Agency, where she led the creation of the Office of International and Tribal Affairs, elevating the agency’s recognition of the sovereign rights of indigenous peoples in the United States. And as a program officer at the Ford Foundation, she created funding initiatives focused on the intersection of environmental justice and community and economic development. This work included the Gulf Coast Fund for Community Renewal and Ecological Health, which supported community-led rebuilding efforts after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and ReGenerations, a national youth organizing program that linked environmental justice with reproductive rights, culture and policy advocacy.
DePass recognizes the need to invest in the next generation and educate them on the importance of racial, social, economic and environmental justice. Early in her career, she taught environmental law and policy at the City University of New York and was responsible for creating the city’s first environmental jobs skills training program for underserved young men and women. She was also the founding executive director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, a membership network linking grassroots organizations from low-income neighborhoods and communities of color in their struggle for environmental justice. In 2013, DePass became dean of the Milano School of International Affairs, Management and Urban Policy and Tishman Professor of Environmental Policy and Management at The New School, an incubator for the next generation of leaders. There, she has shepherded the graduate school toward a social justice focus, developing leadership and supporting project-based research to solve some of society’s most pressing problems around race, climate and sustainability, even as she has elevated the school’s policy and management offerings. DePass also serves as director of The New School’s Tishman Environment and Design Center, a university-wide center committed to bringing an interdisciplinary and environmental justice approach to contemporary environmental challenges. Through the Tishman Center, DePass worked to position The New School as an academic ally in the environmental justice movement by bringing visiting scholars to the university to co-produce research on environmental justice issues, including the implications of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, and Native and Indigenous resistance movements working on climate change. She has also actively served in dozens of philanthropic and nonprofit organizations throughout her career, and currently sits on the governing or advisory boards of The Nature Conservancy, Grist.org, the Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund, and the Perception Institute.
DePass holds a bachelor’s degree from Tufts University, a Juris Doctor from Fordham Law School, an honorary doctorate from Fordham University and a Master of Public Administration from Baruch College, where she was a National Urban Fellow.
Michelle DePass
Shantel Palacio is an Education Policy Analyst, DE&I Consultant, and the Founder of Brownsvillain LLC, an organization aimed at combating stereotype threat in low-income communities of color, starting with her own Brownsville Brooklyn.
Palacio has served as an innovative project manager and chief advisor to senior leaders. She spent nearly 10 years executing both mayoral and chancellor’s initiatives at NYC’s Department of Education before pursuing a doctorate examining how laws and policies impact schools in marginalized communities. Her work includes implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in universities and organizations.
Palacio has published work across several mediums. Her online platform, Brownsvillain was highlighted on National Public Radio in 2018 and she is currently co-producing Million Dollar Block, a film that examines the institutions of public housing, public education, and the criminal justice system through the perspective of residents of Van Dyke Houses in Brownsville. Her co-authored work Falsifying Teacher Absences, about the impact of student absences and teacher absences on student achievement, along with policy recommendations for irremediable conduct, was recently published in West’s Education Law Reporter.
She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of New Hampshire. She holds a B.A in Communication from Bryant University and an MPPA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Shantel Palacio
Having obtained her Undergraduate and Master’s degrees from UCLA and her juris doctor degree from Harvard Law School, Asmara specializes in anti discrimination law and equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging (EDIB) education and training.
Asmara’s EDIB work draws on the mind sciences, including implicit bias, stereotype threat, and racial anxiety, as well as her expertise on intersectionality and knowledge of mediation practices to help institutions both diagnose EDIB-related matters and fashion sensible and effective interventions.
She currently is a Consultant and Trainer for Perception and works in UCLA’s Civil Rights Office where she investigates allegations of discrimination and conducts training on UCLA’s anti discrimination policies. Prior to working at UCLA, Asmara was a federal public defender in the Capital Habeas Unit at the Federal Public Defenders Office for the Southern District of California.
Asmara Carbado
Senior Lead for Program and Facilitation
Sidra Shabbir is the Administrative & Program Manager at Perception Strategies.
Sidra had gotten her start in racial justice work while earning her Bachelors of Arts (B.A.) in Political Science and graduating from Long Island University (LIU) as Valedictorian of the Class of 2020. The focus of her degree was on Political Theory and Intersectionality. While at university, Sidra had gained experience working at multiple law firms to support attorneys in cases representing individuals from lower-income backgrounds. She had gained perspective and learned tools for change while representing LIU at conferences where she had gotten to meet world leaders and pioneers in the global marketplace, including participating at West Point Military Academy’s McDonald Conference for Leaders of Character.
After graduating, she had immediately joined the nonprofit sector, working with start-up companies to branch out and build mission driven organizations from the ground up. Her work has helped expand gun violence prevention initiatives across the New York City area, and create community-public safety methods practiced by the Crisis Management System to this day. While working with community safety groups, the Mayor’s Office of NYC and other political stakeholders, Sidra helped to not only lead Operations for organizations, but had taken on the responsibility of expanding services and budgets for projects that impact resource allocation for communities of more color.
Today, Sidra works closely with Perception leadership to drive special projects and maintain client relationships company wide. She applies her background in legal advocacy, racial justice work, and activism to continue to champion Perception’s mission of creating real solutions to reduce harm in a wide array of sectors and spaces.
Sidra Shabbir
Administrative and Program Manager
Devon Carbado is the Honorable Harry Pregerson Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law and the former Associate Vice Chancellor of BruinX for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. He teaches Constitutional Criminal Procedure, Constitutional Law, Critical Race Theory, and Criminal Adjudication. He has won numerous teaching awards, including being elected Professor of the Year by the UCLA School of Law classes of 2000 and 2006 and received the Law School’s Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2003 and the University’s Distinguished Teaching Award, the Eby Award for the Art of Teaching in 2007. In 2005 Professor Carbado was an inaugural recipient of the Fletcher Foundation Fellowship. Modeled on the Guggenheim fellowships, it is awarded to scholars whose work furthers the goals of Brown v. Board of Education. In 2018, he was named an inaugural recipient of the Atlantic Philanthropies Fellowship for Racial Equity.
Professor Carbado writes in the areas of employment discrimination, criminal procedure, implicit bias, constitutional law, and critical race theory. His scholarship appears in law reviews at UCLA, Berkeley, Harvard, Michigan, Cornell, and Yale, among other venues. He is the author of Acting White? Rethinking Race in “Post-Racial” America (Oxford University Press) (with Mitu Gulati) and the editor of several volumes, including Race Law Stories (Foundation Press) (with Rachel Moran), The Long Walk to Freedom: Runaway Slave Narratives (Beacon Press) (with Donald Weise), and Time on Two Crosses: The Collective Writings of Bayard Rustin (Cleis Press) (with Donald Weise). A board member of the African American Policy Forum, Professor Carbado was the Shikes Fellow in Civil Liberties and Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School in 2012.
Professor Carbado graduated from Harvard Law School in 1994. At Harvard, he was editor-in-chief of the Harvard Black Letter Law Journal, a member of the Board of Student Advisors, and winner of the Northeast Frederick Douglass Moot Court Competition. Carbado joined the UCLA School of Law faculty in 1997. He served as Vice Dean for Faculty and Research at the School of Law from 2006-07, and again in 2009-10. Professor Carbado is currently working on a series of articles on affirmative action and a book on race, law, and police violence.
Devon Carbado
Fahima Islam is the Director of Assessment and Research at Perception Strategies. Fahima works closely with client stakeholders to implement internal needs assessments with a focus on equity and belonging. In her role on the Assessment team, Fahima utilizes mixed methods (climate surveys, focus groups, and/or interviews) to surface key insights and develop context-specific recommendations for organizations. Fahima synthesizes and translates academic research to inform Perception’s Mind Science Workshops and to generate public-facing research reports. She also contributes to the evaluation of story and representation with content creators, with attention to stereotype tropes.
Fahima is committed to social justice and inter-cultural understanding. She has a background in international development and has worked on social and environmental impact initiatives to support local populations in South Asia. Her work has helped stakeholders mobilize people and capital to sustainably rebuild communities and invest in education. She has also endeavored to bring attention to climate change’s disproportionate impact on women and children in order to drive equity. As a Project Implementation Officer with BRAC in Bangladesh, Fahima cultivated relationships with international partners to develop disaster resilience in vulnerable areas and to promote child safety within Rohingya refugee communities. Her work has spanned across racial, socioeconomic, gender, health, environmental and religious equity concerns.
Fahima earned her MPA from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and her BA from New York University’s College of Arts & Science. She is based in Brooklyn, New York.
Fahima Islam
Lauren is a seasoned strategist dedicated to securing equitable futures™ through her work as a catalyst for institutional growth, healing, and innovation. With extensive experience, she collaborates with global high-growth companies to transform cultures and drive scalable solutions. Lauren supports leaders and workplace cultures worldwide through research, counseling, equitable best practices, design, and strategy.
She champions inclusion, extending her reach across diverse industries, including technology, finance, media, and education. As a strategist, coach, and counselor, she actively leverages her expertise in organizational development, change management, and mindfulness to empower individuals and drive positive change.
Formerly a DEI advisor for Goldman Sachs and a director of culture and belonging at prestigious schools, Lauren excels in developing and implementing innovative DEI strategies fostering belonging, engagement, and excellence. She's also a seasoned media professional, having produced and written for CNN, PBS, and Vox Media, with multiple articles on culture to her credit.
Lauren holds a Master's in mental health counseling from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor's in journalism from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She contributes to several advisory boards and has founded two start-ups, one of which aims to make maternal health care more supportive and accessible.
Lauren J. Stewart