This year’s recipients
Adaora Ubaka, University of Illinois at Chicago
Adaora Ubaka is a 4th-year Ph.D. Candidate in Organizational Behavior & HR Management at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Adaora’s work includes research in which she examines how to generate psychological safety and positive relationships across racial and cultural differences. Adaora will use her award to further her research on psychological safety and positive intergroup processes in the workplace.
Ariana Munoz-Salgado, University of Michigan
Ariana Munoz-Salgado is a social psychology Ph.D. student at University of Michigan working with Dr. Sekaquaptewa and Dr. Fryberg. Her research broadly focuses on examining underrepresented group members’ experiences with discrimination, microaggressions, and solo status and the effects on their academic outcomes and wellbeing, specifically in the context of race/ethnicity and gender.
Danielle Parra, University of Michigan
Danielle Parra (she/her) is a second-year graduate student at the University of Michigan. She researches dignity violations within healthcare that contribute to health disparities, using an intersectional approach. Her research aims to illuminate these dignity violations and find ways to prevent them from occurring in the first place.
Derek Brown, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business
Derek Brown is a Ph.D. student in Management of Organizations at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Derek explores the challenges that stifle efforts to reduce inequality and disrupt organizational inclusion goals. In particular, he studies how diversity, prejudice, nonverbal behavior, and hierarchy shape how we interact with others and the increasingly diverse society around us.
Jordan Wylie, City University of New York
Jordan Wylie is a Ph.D. student in Basic and Applied Social Psychology at the City University of New York. Broadly, her research explores how morality and emotions affect perception and judgment, utilizing a diverse suite of methods that includes behavioral experiments, computational modeling, and EEG.
Joyce He, University of Toronto Rotman School of Management
Joyce He is a PhD candidate in Organizational Behaviour and Human Resource Management at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Her research examines how job seekers attempt to overcome anticipated gender biases in hiring decisions, as well as how organizations can harness behavioural insights to de-bias selection procedures.
Katlyn Lee Milless, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Katlyn Lee Milless is a PhD candidate in Basic and Applied Social Psychology at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Her research lives at the intersection of social justice and psychological theory. She investigates factors to upend group disparities in education and the workplace, as well as ways to promote intergroup safety more broadly.
Kimberly Martin, UCLA
Kimberly Martin is a fourth-year PhD student in Social Psychology at UCLA. She graduated with honors from UC Berkeley with a B.A. in Psychology. She investigates the impact of stereotyping and the importance of history to the current experiences, mental and physical health, and perceptions of members of marginalized groups.
Michael Perez, Texas A&M University
Michael Perez is a Ph.D student at Texas A&M University. His research utilizes cultural psychology and critical race theory frameworks to study racism, and intergroup relations. Specifically, he is interested in the sociocultural factors of racial inequality that influence relationships between racial groups and how these dynamics foster ongoing relations.
Mikaela Spruill, Cornell University
Mikaela Spruill's research investigates how judgements and decisions at the person-level aid in sustaining systemic inequities. She aims to understand how individuals’ bias maintains large-scale inequities, via policy preferences and legal decisions. Prior to attending Cornell, she earned her MA in psychology from WFU and her BS in neuroscience from W&M.
Mitchell R. Campbell, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Mitchell R. Campbell (he/him / they/them) is a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin - Madison working with Markus Brauer. In his work, he combines contextual information and relevant psychological theories to create, implement, and evaluate pro-diversity interventions. Outside of work, he's a lover of the outdoors, an avid cross-country skier, and a prolific baker.
Shauna M. Bowes, Emory University
Shauna M. Bowes, M.A., is currently a 4th-year graduate student in the clinical psychology doctoral program at Emory University. She has worked with Dr. Scott O. Lilienfeld at Emory University. Her areas of professional interest include intellectual humility, abnormal and normal personality traits, conspiracy beliefs, cognitive styles, and decision-making.
Tyler Jimenez, University of Missouri
Tyler Jimenez (Nambé Pueblo) is a Social and Personality Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Missouri and a Health Policy Research Scholar at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He primarily studies existential psychology in relation to health and prejudice, as well as police militarization.
About the Award
The award is named in memory of UCLA professor Jenessa Shapiro, who thought it was extremely important to promote diversity and inclusion in her lab, at the university, and in the field more generally. Jenessa took concrete actions to do this in a number of ways, ranging from volunteering for mentorship lunches at professional conferences to serving on committees to address issues of diversity within her departments as well as at the National Institutes of Health. She also engaged in countless other less visible activities to contribute to the goals of diversity, inclusion, and social justice that she never advertised.
