On Monday October 18th, Iheoma U. Iruka, PhD, founding director of the FPG Equity Research Action Coalition, will present Attending to the Adversity of Racism and Leveraging the Cultural Wealth of Black Children and Families. Iruka is a Research Professor in the Department of Public Policy, a Fellow at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG) and the Founding Director of the Equity Research Action Coalition at FPG (the Coalition) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Iruka is leading projects and initiatives focused on ensuring that minoritized children and children from low-income households, especially Black children, are thriving. She is focused on ensuring excellence for young diverse learners, especially Black children and their families, through the intersection of anti-bias, anti-racist, culturally grounded research, program, and policy. Some areas of focus include family engagement and support, quality rating and improvement systems, and early care and education system and programs. Iruka serves and has served on numerous national and local boards and committees, including the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the National Advisory Committee for the U.S. Census Bureau, the American Psychological Association’s Board of Educational Affairs, Brady Education Foundation, and Trust for Learning. She has a B.A. in Psychology from Temple University, an M.A. in Psychology from Boston University, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in applied developmental psychology from the University of Miami, FL.