text: Dr. Laura Quiros
  Dr. Laura Quiros, LMSW, advises, coaches, and trains boards of directors, executives, and other professionals across the corporate, professional services, higher education, and nonprofit sectors to advance their DEI efforts. She regularly works with clients to expand their racial literacy and help them communicate more inclusively about gender, identity, and race.
  Dr. Quiros works as an Associate Professor at Montclair State University, where she teaches social work practice at the doctoral and master's levels. She also serves as the Director of Adelphi University’s Anti-Oppressive Leadership Fellows Program. Prior to her current role, she spent nearly 15 years as an Associate Professor of Social Work at Adelphi University teaching at the graduate degree level. Her research and scholarly interests focus on the social construction of racial and ethnic identity and trauma informed care through a social justice lens. Dr. Quiros was awarded the Adelphi University 2021 Award for Excellence in Teaching Social Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (SJEDI). The annual Excellence in Teaching SJEDI Award honors an Adelphi professor who demonstrates a commitment to SJEDI inside the classroom above and beyond the standard curriculum for the faculty member's discipline.
  As a woman of color from a multicultural background, Dr. Quiros leverages her experiences, relationship building, and clinical skills to foster connections, inclusion, and empathic accountability. Having to negotiate her own identity required her to create safe spaces to survive and thrive and helped her develop tools that allow her to relate to various experiences that impact diverse groups.
  Dr. Quiros earned her Ph.D. in Social Welfare from The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York, where her dissertation focused on “The Social Construction of Racial and Ethnic Identity among Women of Color from Mixed Ancestry: Psychological Freedoms and Sociological.” She also earned a master’s degree in social work from Hunter College School of Social Work and a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Skidmore College. Dr. Quiros' latest book focuses on incorporating diversity and inclusion into trauma-informed social work.