Guest Maryam Kia-Keating, Dartmouth ’96, was keen to help students find their voice and build supportive communities as an undergraduate advisor and area coordinator in the residence halls. And she could see a life full of this sort of work with broader populations. But with a psychology major and volunteer activities such as sexual assault peer counselor, the honor code committee, and psychiatric care work, she kept having to confront the reactive end of the spectrum of care, where things had already gone bad and helpers were having to try to make things better. She found her natural inclination, however, was to start from a place of strength and instead think about building stronger communities so that the bad stuff doesn’t happen in the first place. She found a graduate program that helped foster this idea and then held tight to it (if quietly) through her clinical psychology training.

She began to focus her career on the idea of resilience and concentrated on a group she understood deeply from her own lived experience: refugee communities. Again, she found that giving voice to others yields stronger policy outcomes and heathier communities, thus she committed to using a community-based participatory research methodology in her work with both refugee groups and young people. Through the work, she has found vulnerabilities and strengths that she knew, from experience, were there all along.

In this episode, find out from Maryam how giving people voice and understanding their resilience can be the key to strengthening community…on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.

Bonus: Maryam also gives us thoughts for tapping our own resilience for the good of the young people around us.

About This Episode's Guest

Maryam Kia-Keating is a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in its school of Education’s Department of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology. Her scholarship and activism centers around resilience and empowers individuals, families, schools, and communities through participatory action and human centered design. She is also a Licensed Clinical Psychologist and a mom of two.

Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley

Music: Brian Burrows

Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com

Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com

Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com

Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley

Music: Brian Burrows

Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com

Research in Action: Maryam Kia-Keating on giving people voice and uncovering resilience

Roads Taken