This objective of this presentation is to describe efforts by the Hispanic Neuropsychological Society’s (HNS) Mentoring Program during the peak of the double pandemic in 2021. In the wake of the disparities highlighted by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in the hands of non-Hispanic white law enforcement agents, the United States (US) and the world are facing a social reckoning. In response to the current socio-political climate in the US, the Hispanic Neuropsychological Society’s (HNS) Mentoring Program intentionally integrated the work of Black and Brown scholars from other disciplines (education, sociology, anthropology, social work, policy, law, public health, journalism, art sciences) to develop an Equity and Anti-racist curriculum for the 2020-2021 mentoring program year. 

Using critical pedagogy as the theoretical foundation and critical self-reflection as the methodology, our two-part webinars on professional development, mentorship, and sponsorship were designed to unpack systemic strategies of oppression in academic settings impacting under-represented minority (URM) trainees, and professionals. Our overarching objective was to discuss how structural racism in academic medicine, sites where many of our neuropsychology programs are housed, uphold predictable practices that “push out” persons from historically minoritized groups via isolation, retaliation, forced assimilation, dehumanization, devaluation of their scholarly work focused on equity and justice denoting it as “activism” rather than scholarship.

Our 2020-2021 mentoring program members (n = 90) are 85% trainees (undergrad, post-bac, grad and beyond) and early career professionals, and 95% are cis-women and LGBTQIA+. Attendance to the live webinars ranged from 13 to 24% (4th Wednesday of the month). Similar number of participants engaged in the post-webinar dialogues. Initial themes on pain, trauma, and hopelessness in attaining an equitable academic career authentic to individual identities and values emerged from the dialogues. Generative themes arose with the progression of the webinars ranging from belonging and reckoning with individual complicity with the oppressive systems governing neuropsychology. 

Following the work of Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), praxis (reflection - word - action) was the overall foundation of HNS Mentoring Program’s Equity and Anti-Racist Educational Series for the 2020-2021 academic year. We created a vulnerable and safe space for honest and radical dialogue to identify oppressive structures and understand how they affect us. Self-exploration in a non-judgmental space was key in these didactic and experiential meetings to understand how we internalize oppressive strategies, which potentially contributes to many individuals from historically minoritized groups leaving academia with a sense of betrayal. By engaging in praxis, trainees and professionals have been equitably co-creating generative themes based on their unique lived experiences with the intention of igniting a paradigm shift in our current models of professional development, mentorship, and sponsorship governing neuropsychology.