Ashley Leak Bryant, PhD, RN, OCN, FAAN is the Senior Associate Dean for Global Initiatives and the Frances Hill Fox Distinguished Professor in the School of Nursing. Dr. Bryant possesses expertise on older adults, palliative and supportive care, acute myeloid leukemia (AML), interprofessional collaboration, and workforce development. Her program of research focuses on delivering multidisciplinary interventions to improve symptoms, functional status, and quality of life for both older adults with blood cancers and their caregivers. 

Dr. Chantel Martin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Gillings School of Global Public Health, Faculty Fellow at the Carolina Population Center, and Co-Director of Cardiopulmunary Research at the Center for Environmental Health and Susceptibility at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As a social epidemiologist, Dr. Martin’s research program focuses on investigating the social and structural drivers of racial inequalities across the life course and potential underlying biological mechanisms. She is an Multiple Principal Investigator (MPI) of an National Institute on Aging R01 project investigating the extent to which structural racism across adolescence to mid-life shape Black-White inequalities in Alzheimer’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease-related Dementias risk. In addition, she is currently leading two pilot projects focused on environmental stressors, DNA methylation patterns, and racial inequalities in birth outcomes. Dr. Martin’s research program has been instrumental in supporting the development of other early career researchers, postdoctoral fellows, and doctoral, master’s, and undergraduate students. 

Dr. Kendra Jason (she/her/hers) is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the College of Humanities & Earth and Social Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Dr. Jason is an interdisciplinary health disparities scholar who examines the multi-level factors that may influence the relationship between race, health, and desired workforce participation for older workers. Her most recent work focuses on the impacts of COVID-19 on older workers. She also has a particular interest in the experiences of custodial Black grandmothers and Black women at work and how these experiences shape the health and well-being of Black women and the communities they live. Dr. Jason’s research on these issues is published in The Gerontologist, Journal of Applied Gerontology, Journal of Aging and Health Occupational Health Science, Social Currents, The Journal of Sociology and Social Work, and Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities; and has been featured on Forbes.com and PBS Next Avenue. She is the editor of Race and Social Justice: Building and Inclusive College through Awareness, Advocacy, and Action (2023).

Kristen Lindquist, PhD. is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and the President of the Society for Affective Science. Her research seeks to understand the psychological and neural basis of emotions, moods, and feelings. Her on-going work uses tools from social cognition, physiology, neuroscience, and big data methods to examine how emotions emerge from the confluence of the body, brain, and cultural learning and how they change across the lifespan.

Dr. Diaz is currently an Assistant Professor of Neurology in the Division of Multiple Sclerosis and Neuroimmunology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. Dr. Diaz’s research interests include cognitive impairment in people living with HIV or following COVID-19 infection, particularly in Latin America and among Latinos living in the US, and the burden of Alzheimer’s dementia and related diseases in international settings. She leads several studies, funded by the NIH and Alzheimer’s Association, on HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders in older Peruvians with HIV, epidemiology of dementia in older community-dwelling Peruvians and epidemiology of dementia and frailty in rural eastern Uganda. 

Shelby Baez, Ph.D., ATC, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Exercise and Sport Science and the Director of the Psychology of Sport Injury Laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Baez’s research examines the impact of psychosocial factors on health outcomes after sport-related injury, with a focus on patients with traumatic knee injuries. Her lab examines the impact of psychosocial factors on biological outcomes, such as neurocognitive function, biomechanical alterations, and secondary injury risk. Her lab also seeks to identify clinically feasible and novel psychosocial interventions to improve health outcomes.