Is it weird to wax philosophical about industrial-organizational psychology while making cucumber guac? Or natter on about stress and leadership while feeding tortoises? Or these days do all of the above while wrangling a miniature person? I don’t think so.  (Or rather, I hope not – because I do it pretty regularly.) I'm a recovering perfectionist too, which is part of why I try to share things warts and all and force myself to just ship things and write occasionally without editing too much. Hence the imperfection you'll find here, this is a space to practice imperfect communication.

Professionally

I graduated with my PhD in Industrial-Organizational Psychology (with a specialty in Occupational Health Psychology ) from Clemson in 2011. If you haven’t heard of it, I-O is the scientific study of all aspects of work –  I want work to be better for everyone.

These days,  I’m an Associate Professor of Practice in Organizational Leadership & Psychology at the University of Arizona in the College of Applied Science and Technology, my program can be completed fully online. I’m constantly working to make sure our courses are a positive experience where our students gain knowledge they can apply in the workplace immediately. Managing Diversity (and being inclusive)! Communicating! Systems Thinking! Understanding Org. Behavior! I teach my students how to be great at these things.

Personally

I used to spend an inordinate amount of time on my pets (dogs, cats, fish AND desert tortoises) and exploring my admittedly minimal domestic abilities.  Who knew staying in one place for a while and planting green things could be so gratifying?!  (I did not.) I’m a recovering early adopter to nearly every type of technology so pre-child I happily spent hours exploring any new app/platform/program and then talking my friends’ collective ears off about how they should be using it, too. 

I maintain a deep and abiding love for dabbling and trying new methods.  I’ll try just about anything once (or three times) and tweaking tiny aspects of my life brings me great joy.  I’ve experimented with nearly every digital to-do-list platform out there – and I can tell what works and what doesn’t. (Constantly experimenting with new to-do-list-tools doesn’t. Not. at. all. Levenger Circa and my Rocketbooks all the way my friends, game changers.) In the same vein, I also love automating things. That’s probably why I’ll go without eating if it means I can have my beloved Neatos.

These days I spend a LOT of my time on the tiny person who shares my home, and have much less for all of the exciting things I mentioned above, but my interests haven't changed. I've just reprioritized human development to be much higher on the list on the homefront than it used to be for the short season of my life where I have a small dependent in my regular orbit. 

What This Space Is For

This online home is a space for me to explore ideas and share things I just don’t have another platform for. It will also host any external posts from my lab, since one of our goals is to share the things we do and to make more of our work accessible.  While I will talk about psychology or workplace logistics, it will probably not be in my academic or professional voice.  Because that would be boring.

Keen to make some magic in your organization, chat about tortoise wrangling, join my lab, or become a better leader? Drop me a line at brandyaperkl [at] gmail.com.

Portrait of Brandy A. Brown (now Perkl) in the UA Optical Sciences building as perceived by the brilliant creatives of Fletcher&Co.

Feel free to track me down any of these places, but I sadly don't keep everything as up to date as I would like. Raising little ones is a busy task and the job + my students come second, this stuff always comes third (when there's even time for thirds to be tended to). - Dr. BP