Meet Dr. Brittany Lewis

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dr. Brittany Lewis. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dr. Brittany below.

Hi Dr. Brittany , really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

When I was a graduate student I ran into bell hooks at the bar of the 2014 National Women’s Studies Association Conference. Hooks advised me not to allow the conservatizing efforts of the tenure process to overshadow my commitment to making my work accessible. In her keynote address, she later described the many emails and phone calls she was receiving from women across the country suffering in silence in academic institutions. Feminism had lost its politics. I would later become one of the women that hooks described.

On February 6, 2025, I officially left the academy–11 years later. Prior to that, I maintained at least three different jobs while getting a divorce, surviving domestic violence, raising two daughters, and starting two businesses. My pathway to the academy was built on my deep love for Black women and families. Most research about Black women frames us as objects for study and the causes of urban poverty– a damaging narrative that distorts the complex realities of structural violence. I wanted to co-create actionable research products with those most impacted to co-produce winnable tangible solutions, not write journal articles that simply mesmerized problems. However, I was always pursuing that passion one foot in and outside the academy, stretching myself thin, and neglecting my health and those around me while believing I had to be connected to the academy to be taken seriously.

I allowed the academy’s definition of success to constrain my use of my gifts. It was not until I left my teaching position at Bowdoin College that I was ready to face that I was not living up to my purpose as a leader. I was tired of my work only being made available to a privileged few who often undermined my knowledge and presence in the classroom. I quit my job, moved home, and became a lead researcher at a University center. Although I was leading engaged action research projects in partnership with urban communities, I was still confined by University policies that I had to fight, while trying to convince center leadership of my vision to create more impact. Like many Black women, I was giving my gifts of innovation away for free. Then, I decided to shut my mouth and create the institution I wish I could have worked at: Research in Action.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I am the Founder and CEO at Research in Action, a ground-breaking social benefit corporation established in 2018 to reclaim the power of research by centering community expertise. In deep collaboration with hundreds of community members, I co-created the innovative Equity in Action (EIA) model that redistributes power and is accountable to the inherent leadership of impacted community members at every step of the research process.

A former University Professor and Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank Scholar-in-Residence, I have spent more than 15 years working in partnership with local communities impacted by racial injustice to co-create new knowledge and drive policy change that makes a real difference in people’s lives. My research has been used to catalyze action in myriad ways, including but not limited to:

in a Minnesota Supreme Court to expand rights for tenants facing evictions
at the Minnesota State Legislature to inform the human services and public safety impact agenda
at Hennepin County to remove a harmful self pay policy at homeless shelters
at the City of Minneapolis to guide the creation of a tenant protection ordinance

I have authored a number of policy action reports such as The Illusion of Choice: Evictions and Profit in North Minneapolis and The State of Black Women’s Economics in Minnesota. I am also author of a forthcoming book called Building a New Table with the University of Minnesota Press, which focuses on changemaking using the EIA model.

In my capacity at Research in Action, I have led multiple research projects in deep collaboration with a multi-racial, gender-diverse team that models how multi-racial coalitions with Black expertise at the helm are needed to create equitable change. I am a well respected coach and trainer who supports leaders and organizations utilize the values and tools developed in the EIA model to grow in their strategies, self awareness, and impact.

I am also a sought after thought partner and leader. I am featured in the award winning documentary Jim Crow of the North and I am a the recipient of the Bush Foundation Fellow and the University of Minnesota Engaged Scholars Award, among many other accolades.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I was inspired by something that Dr. Cornel West stated in an interview with Anderson Copper on CNN after the murder of George Floyd. He stated, “We don’t need lukewarm folk, we don’t need summer soldiers… we need all season love warriors.” I am an all-season love warrior whose committed my life’s work to the most radical thing a Black woman from the inner city could have ever done, choosing data as a language for change. What is the most radical thing that you could be doing? I have used that medium to ensure that my vision for equity through data as innovation looks for solutions that address systemic inequities, works collaboratively with those communities most impacted, and add solutions that are commensurate with the cause of inequity itself. In doing so, I become a concrete example of how we can stop doing things to community and create tables with community who are not there to advise but must be present to lead. And I do this work with love. I do not mean the kind of love that often finds its ways onto our screens in the form of cultural appropriation, tokenism, and nominal appeasement. I mean a love grounded in a social justice ethic that aims to fight for the humanity of us all and disrupt the notion that anything is objective.

Tell us what your ideal client would be like?

The only thing that makes it hard for us at Research in Action (RIA) to live in our values when we are in partnership with an organization or entity is the politics of working with three different types of groups. The first group I call them the Tolerators. These groups come to Research in Action (RIA), because media recorded public displays of discrimination, lawsuits, and an extreme loss in revenue or public support forced them to come to us. They are skeptical of our methods and even question the value of what we do, but because we are well-respected, and they want to save face, they reach out to us anyway or are referred to us and then dragged to a meeting to explore the possibilities. I typically don’t take on these partnerships and I only do so after the organization invests time and resources into doing their own internal diversity, equity, and inclusion work, which we offer to support, but many choose not to do and so they weed themselves out. The second group I call the inspired equity performers. I happen to enjoy working with this group the most. They have equity-based language down, have a few token employees of color, and data illustrating how they have engaged with marginal communities, but are struggling to understand why their works outcomes don’t match their well-intentioned energy. These entities often want to learn and grow, but need support, guidance, and a model that has proven outcomes. However, within this group are two subgroups. The first is the radical imaginer and the other is the colonized thinkers. The radical imaginer is willing to take risks, responds well to criticism, and does more listening than talking welcoming co-collaboration with community. The colonized thinkers assert their thoughts and opinions any chance they can get, resists the process they signed up for, and at times will use the fact that they bring more financial resources to the table as a way to try and influence the direction of the partnership. As Audre Lorde once said, “you cannot dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools.” I have worked with both types of inspired equity performers.
The last group that makes my work challenging is the dreamer. The dreamer has all the right language, is deeply grounded in community, loves the frameworks of the process that we lead, but absolutely hates what they feel like is a reformist agenda. To be a reformist means that you are willing to work within the systems that currently exist and to be more radically leaning means that you want to completely dismantle the entire system and create a new one. I have certainly described the extremes of these theories of change for the purposes of simplistic clarity and for some dramatic effect. Even among some of my peers we wholeheartedly disagree about these theories of change and its nuances. However, at Research in Action (RIA) and for myself specifically, I believe that our work has to attend to both, but front load the need to produce winnable tangible change in the short term, because those communities that have gone underserved and under-resourced for decades are now our co-collaborators and they need support and resources now. This requires us to develop innovative solutions within systems that were never meant to serve those populations equitably while helping organizations and entities begin the building blocks of the radical change that we would all like to see take place in our lifetimes.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.researchinaction.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/researchinaction/
• Linkedin: https://www.instagram.com/researchinaction/