Riana Elyse Anderson is an Associate Professor at Columbia University's School of Social Work. She earned her doctorate in Clinical and Community Psychology at the University of Virginia and completed a Clinical and Community Psychology Residency at Yale University's School of Medicine and a Fellowship in Applied Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.  Dr. Anderson aims to facilitate healing in Black families with practical applications of her research and clinical services, as well as through public engagement, teaching, mentorship, and policy recommendations. Dr. Anderson uses mixed methods to study discrimination and racial socialization in Black families and apply her findings to help families reduce their racial stress. She is particularly interested in how family-based interventions help to improve Black youth’s psychosocial well-being and health-related behaviors.

During the fellowship period, Dr. Anderson aims to develop a book prospectus “Reparation of the Mind: Healing from Racial Pain”. The concept of this book requires readers to tussle with reparations as a financial means of addressing harm while expanding their beliefs of repair inwards. Utilizing psychological concepts like trauma, pain, insight, and liberation, I argue that the work Black Americans undertake to heal from the past and ongoing racial animus beleaguering the United States is a form of reparation of the mind. When finished, this book will help answer a crucial question: how can Black Americans be compensated for the wrongs committed by this country? I will argue that we must excavate the root of reparation (to repair) and compensation (recompense), as they both call for amends towards the harmed, for true advancement of Black Americans in this country.