Porsche Boddicker-Young, PhD is a Research Scientist in the Early Childhood Development department at Child Trends, and is one of Child Trends’ experts on racial equity. She's received her degrees from Historically Black Universities (HBCUs) and as such, all of the work she does is guided by a racial equity lens. Her research interests include culturally responsive teaching and pedagogy, disproportionality of preschool expulsion rates with Black children, the relationships between racial identity and academic and opportunity gaps, and the experiences of students at HBCUs.During Dr. Boddicker-Young’s time as both a student and employee at Howard University, she worked in the Developmental and Early Learning Lab examining preschoolers’ causal inference generation and goal structure understanding. This work informed how Black children understand their environments and are ready for school, and how the school is ready for them. From there, Dr. Boddicker-Young worked under Capstone Institute, investigating culturally responsive teaching practices and pedagogies that dismantle “conventional” ways of learning. This work informed Dr. Boddicker-Young’s dissertation, which focused on the relationship between racial identity, academic achievement, and adjustment to college across different types of colleges (Predominantly White Institutions vs. HBCUs). Currently at Child Trends, Dr. Boddicker-Young is the Co-Principle Investigator for the Montessori Policy Study, a study funded by the Brady Education Foundation. This study investigates the extent to which school enrollment policies are promoting or limiting specific families’ access to public Montessori pre-K programs. She is also the Project Director for the Early Childhood Health Equity Landscape Project, a project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and in partnership with the National Institute for Child Health Quality. This project explores the innovative practices at the intersection of early childhood development and health equity across the United States. Dr. Boddicker-Young was selected by staff at Child Trends to serve on a nine-person workgroup designed to explicitly bring a race equity perspective to Child Trends’ work. She also serves as one of the planners for informal, once-monthly lunch discussions about a range of racial equity topics. This group allows Child Trends staff to discuss topics ranging from ongoing current events to issues impacting Black Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) at Child Trends.