RIANA ELYSE ANDERSON, PH.D., LCP
Developer and Director
Dr. Riana Elyse Anderson is an Associate Professor of Social Work at the Columbia University School of Social Work. For over a decade, Dr. Anderson has been working with Black youth and their families to “dropkick” racism and engage in resistance for a healthy mind, body, and spirit. Her mission is to develop programs, products, and places which eradicate the impact of discrimination on Black youth’s mental health.
Dr. Anderson is the developer and director of the EMBRace (Engaging, Managing, and Bonding through Race) intervention and loves to translate her work for a variety of audiences, particularly those whom she serves in the community, via blogs, video, and literary articles.
Dr. Anderson was born and raised in Detroit and is becoming increasingly addicted to cake pops.
EMBRace DEVELOPMENT
In order to address the need for programming around racial socialization among black families, EMBRace (Engaging, Managing, and Bonding through Race) was developed by Drs. Riana Anderson and Howard Stevenson at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania in the 2015-2016 academic year. EMBRace is based out of Dr. Howard Stevenson's Racial Empowerment Collaborative (REC). The program offers racial socialization skills training to parents for processing individual and parent-child dynamics. This training includes skills development of racial socialization knowledge, stress management, and coping. EMBRace is the first reported racial socialization intervention for adolescents and their parents. Additionally, EMBRace uses RECAST as a culturally-relevant theoretical model to explain how racial socialization practices are both stressful for families to initiate and used to cope with the racial stress youth experience.
MEET OUR TEAM
FARDOWSA DAHIR
Program Coordinator
My name is Fardowsa, and I am the Project Coordinator for the EMBRace Lab. I have a background in public health and psychology with a focus on trauma, and I joined EMBRace because I am passionate about integrating community-based work with research to support justice and healing. Before EMBRace, I worked with the Healthy Brain Network at the Child Mind Institute and served as a San Francisco Urban Fellow focusing on maternal and child health. I am also involved in community organizing, including leading prison and reproductive-justice work. Outside of work, I enjoy reading, traveling, and live music.