Psychology Lecture Series: Dr. Aarati Kasturirangan '99

The psychology department welcomes Aarati Kasturirangan '99 as the first speaker in its 2026-2027 lecture series: Community Psychology and Advocacy. She will present on "In it Together - how a community psychologist can impact movements for social change." 

Community psychologists build lenses, skills and tools that movements for social change need to be effective. In this talk, Aarati Kasturirangan, Ph.D. (Dr.K)  will share stories from her twenty-five year career working in social change organizations. She will share what she learned in her training as a psychology major at SMCM and in her graduate studies in Community Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, drawing a direct line between what she learned and her work in social change organizations. To illustrate, Dr, K. will spotlight a toolkit she developed to support movement groups working through internal conflict, “In it Together: a framework for conflict transformation in movement-building groups”. 

Aarati Kasturirangan, Ph.D. (she/her), is the Interim Executive Director at Resource Generation (RG). RG organizes young people with access to wealth and class privilege in the U.S. to become transformative leaders working toward the equitable distribution of wealth, land, and power.  She earned her doctoral degree in Community & Prevention in Psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Over the last twenty-five years, Dr. Kasturirangan has worked as a crisis counselor, prevention educator, outreach specialist, community organizer, program evaluator, grantmaker, and consultant. In all of her roles she has been driven by one core question, “what must be done to make our vision for a just, equitable and joyful world a reality?” 

This event may be used to satisfy the Lecture Reflection Requirement in PSYC206 and PSYC493/494.