IERE Racial Equity Fellows and Interns

Ofa Ejaife is a doctoral candidate in the Economic and Racial Equity concentration at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management. Her research primarily focuses on the psychosocial issues of racism, sexism, and social justice, and on forms of structural, direct, and symbolic racism and sexism endemic to U.S. society, through an intersectionality framework. Ofa has a BA in Psychology and an MA in Community Psychology, both from the University of Massachusetts Lowell. With interdisciplinary training—utilizing critical qualitative and quantitative methods—her research is committed to understanding and alleviating various forms of subjugation influencing social realities. Ofa has been involved in various community-based projects including: financial empowerment; credit building initiatives; racial equity in child savings accounts; evaluation of a best-practice gang and youth violence reduction program in four cities in Massachusetts; and providing resources to develop, implement, and sustain policies for programs aimed at promoting housing stability. Currently, her dissertation examines how non-income employment-based wealth building resources are connected to racial stratification and the Black-White health gap.

Joanna Taylor received her Master’s in Education through the Boston Teacher Residency program and a BA in History from Swarthmore College. She taught high school and was a youth worker in Boston for over eight years. Her research interests are in the school-to-prison pipeline, with a focus on reducing racial disparities in discipline. Joanna’s dissertation focuses on the long-term consequences of being suspended for young women, following them into early adulthood. With the Lawyers’ Committee on Civil Rights, she published two reports on the state of school discipline in Massachusetts following a 2014 change to the laws governing suspension and expulsions. In addition, Joanna co-authored two articles with Tatjana Meschede examining wealth accumulation for Black and white families with college degrees in the United States.

Jarvis Williams is a doctoral candidate in the Economic and Racial Equity concentration at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management. His area of concern revolves around the concept of citizenship and the social fruits that fall from its conceptual tree. As a seminary-trained and ordained Christian minister, Jarvis has attempted to merge his ongoing quest for the Beloved Community by identifying and analyzing our collective concern for specific populations haunted by the stain of social stigma. His overarching thesis suggests that systemic failure is best recognized by analyzing socially stigmatized populations that expose the fragility, and sometimes hypocrisy, of our collective institutional values of truth and justice. With years of ministerial service within marginalized communities, Jarvis is convinced that true transformation must be coupled with an unflinching investigation into the moral sensibilities of some of our most fundamental institutions. To explore his overarching thesis, Jarvis is asking a very simple question in his dissertation. What happens to wrongfully convicted exonerees after they are released from prison? Equally of interest, what should happen to these newly released citizens? Many states have attempted to address this question through statutory compensation policies. Jarvis will investigate this policy option and assess whether or not it produces the fundamental social fruits of citizenship. By interviewing wrongfully convicted exonerees, Jarvis hopes to learn how the policy of statutory compensation actually impacts the lives of these newly released citizens. As an African American male and descendant of enslaved people in the U.S. with years of research and lived experience, Jarvis sees the concept of citizenship as an elusive ideal when applied to socially stigmatized populations. Indeed, the ongoing challenge for Jarvis is to continue participating as a citizen and demonstrating concern for the socially stigmatized citizens, which proves to be a radical notion within the U.S. Undoubtedly, Jarvis wonders if his own citizenship status will ever be authentically recognized. Nevertheless, his dissertation is a reminder to the socially stigmatized populations within our society, sometimes the socially stigmatized must lead the way in recognizing the socially stigmatized.