Brandy A. B. Perkl, Ph.D.

Is it weird to wax philosophical about industrial-organizational psychology while making cucumber guac? Or natter on about mentoring and belonging 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 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 a Professor of Practice in Educational Psychology at the University of Arizona in the College of Education, where I'm developing the Data Literacy in Education MEd program. I'm also Co-PI for the U.S. Department of Education's IES AWARDSS grant, where I get to do my favorite work: training mentors and supporting underrepresented students in their academic journeys. I serve on the Steering Committee for UA's MENTOR Institute and am constantly working to make mentoring more evidence-based, inclusive, and effective.

Before this, I spent over a decade building and teaching in the Organizational Leadership BAS program and leading faculty governance through some wild institutional changes (UA South → CAST → merger with InfoSci). That work taught me a lot about resilience, adaptation, and what it really takes to support students and colleagues through transitions.

Check out my Everything + The Kitchen Sink version of my CV (it's a constant work in progress).
Current Practice & Scholarly Interests: Evidence-based mentoring, cultural intelligence, inclusive practices, data literacy in education, developmental networks, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Also? Anything anyone I like working with wants to collaborate on!

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 until recently.) 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 whichever thing I fell in love with that week. Now, less so (because less time).

I maintain a deep and abiding love for dabbling and trying new methods. I'll try just about anything once (or three times) and refining systems to reduce friction/pain points 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. TickTick 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 robot vacuum whizzing by to keep all that fur off my floors on the daily.

These days I spend a LOT of my time on the little person who shares my home, and have much less time 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 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 (and maybe add affiliate links so if someone else benefits I might benefit too). It will also host any external posts from my lab (when I have one), 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, set up a mentoring program, do some training, 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

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