Our Team

Meg Bond is Professor in the Psychology Department an, Director of the Center for Women & Work at UMass Lowell. Image by Meg Moore

Lead Facilitators

Meg A. Bond, Ph.D., is a Distinguished University Professor, Director of the Center for Women & Work, and Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Dr. Bond specializes in the dynamics of workforce diversity and sexual harassment. She served on the U.S. EEOC’s Special Task Force on the Prevention of Harassment in the Workplace that released a comprehensive report in June 2016. She is also the Director of UML’s NSF-funded $3.5 million ADVANCE Institutional Transformation Initiative, called Making WAVES (Women Academics Valued and Engaged in STEM). She has received career awards for mentoring ethnically and racially diverse professionals and for contributions to understanding diversity in community research and action. She has served in national leadership roles with the Society for Community Research and Action, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, and the American Psychological Association. 
Haynes-Baratz-Michelle-800

Michelle C. Haynes-Baratz, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and a Faculty Associate at the Center for Women & Work. For almost two decades, her research has focused on workplace diversity issues, with a particular interest in the obstacles women and people of color experience in the work domain and strategies for overcoming them. She is a Co-PI and the Social Science Research Director for the UML NSF ADVANCE Institutional Transformation Project, Making WAVES - a $3.5 million grant whose goal is to disrupt interpersonal and institutional microaggressions that undermine the productivity and well-being of women STEM Faculty. She regularly publishes her work in top academic journals and her research has been cited in popular press outlets including The Atlantic, The Huffington post, Harvard Business Review, The LA Times, NPR and Cosmopolitan.

Darcie Boyer

Staff

Darcie Boyer is Center Manager for the Center for Women & Work at UMass Lowell. She is a graduate of UMass Lowell’s master’s program in Regional Economic and Social Development, with her research thesis work focused on the importance of including community members in decision making and planning for public transportation policy decisions. Prior to her work at the Center for Women & Work, Darcie was a community organizer with the Coalition for a Better Acre, working to ensure that the voice of residents in Lowell’s poorest and most diverse neighborhood were heard and respected in the decisions that impacted their lives and community. She is active in Lowell organizing efforts and is a founding member of Lowell Education Justice Alliance, a grassroots group of parents, teachers, students, and community allies working to protect and improve our public schools.

Mary Spooner

Mary Spooner, Ph.D. is the Director of the Equity Initiative at the Center for Women & Work at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She has a doctorate in Public Policy and a master’s degree in Social Policy and Planning. For over a decade Dr. Spooner has evaluated programs on behalf of federal, state and local agencies. She also has multiple years of experience working with community organizations across multiple states, helping them to understand the needs of constituents and developing programs that address inequities in service access and delivery. Dr. Spooner currently leads the departmental climate assessment work at UML and plays a key role in developing trainings and consulting with organizations. This initiative is part of a $3.5 million NSF ADVANCE Making WAVES Project designed to promote an academic environment that supports STEM women. Interventions associated with the WAVES project aim to disrupt interpersonal and institutional microaggressions, promote alternative support networks for STEM faculty, and address organizational policies and practices that encourage bias.