Brooke C. Coley, Ph.D. is Founding Executive Director of the Center for Research Advancing Racial Equity, Justice, and Sociotechnical Innovation Centered in Engineering (RARE JUSTICE)—an unprecedented testbed for innovating and modeling antiracist and equitable engineering futures—and Assistant Professor of Engineering, both at Arizona State University. Across several national projects funded primarily by the National Science Foundation, Dr. Coley’s research lies at the intersection of racial equity, mental health and qualitative research methods encompassing critical theory, participatory action research, and arts-based research methods. Her work is anchored in an intentional amplification of the voices of minoritized populations in STEM with the goal of informing disruption of the pervasive systemic inequities found in racialized organizations such as institutions of higher learning. Leveraging the outcomes of this work, Dr. Coley will continue to create exemplars of equity in action across realms of the academic enterprise—lived experience and restorative justice, scholarship generation and metrics, and rewards systems and structures.

Dr. Coley recently received the 2021 Diversity and Inclusion Award from the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering for her commitment to creating and fostering a diverse and inclusive environment. Dr. Coley earned her Doctor of Philosophy degree in Bioengineering with a concentration in Biomechanics from the University of Pittsburgh. She also completed her Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering at the University of Maryland Baltimore County as a Meyerhoff Scholar.