At the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity, we believe that equity-driven work is not just about the research we produce but the people who shape it. This summer, we celebrate the remarkable journeys of our community members who are transitioning into new roles, programs, and stages of life. Their contributions have left a lasting mark on the Center, and we are proud to share where their paths are leading next.

Research Associates
Our research associates have played a critical role in advancing the Center’s initiatives through rigorous scholarship, community-based research, and public-facing communications. This year, several associates are moving on to exciting new chapters:

Erica Phillips recently wrapped up nearly six years with the Cook Center, where she played a key role in advancing the Center’s educational equity work. Most recently, she supported the IES-funded research on equity in gifted education and contributed to the educational policy working group, focusing on K-12 students.

Erica has transitioned into a new role as Administrative Director at Duke, where she continues working in the grant-funded research space—helping run operations, manage teams, and support cross-campus academic initiatives.

Tori Cook began her journey with the Cook Center in 2021 as a part-time Research Assistant while completing her Master’s in Social Work, and advanced to a full-time Associate position in March 2024. Over the past year, she has contributed to two major initiatives: the National Asset Scorecard for Communities of Color – Entrepreneurship (NASCC-E) Project and the Restoring Equity and Empowering Generations Reparations Study.

For the NASCC-E project, she helped administer surveys and focus groups with entrepreneurs across five major cities and now supports the analysis and report writing phase. For the Reparations Study, she analyzed approximately 40 existing reparation programs, conducted focus groups, and administered surveys with program administrators and community members. She is currently conducting interviews with program recipients to identify best practices and evaluate municipal reparation plans.

Tori credits mentorship from postdoctoral fellows and faculty affiliates for her growth and enjoyed engaging with entrepreneurs and communities at in-person events in D.C., Atlanta, Charlotte, and Durham. This fall, she will begin a PhD in Sociology at UNC-Chapel Hill, focusing on the intersection of race, gender, and carceral systems. Her proposed research includes a comparative study of parole officers and returning citizens, prison ethnography, and archival research on racial violence. Her interdisciplinary training in social work, sociology, and critical criminology positions her to impact both scholarship and policy.

Postdoctoral Fellows
The Center’s postdocs have made invaluable contributions through mentorship, interdisciplinary collaboration, and groundbreaking research. We proudly share that several have secured academic positions and will be joining university faculties across the world:

Aten Zaandam earned his PhD in Management from Kent State University in 2023. He will transition from the Cook Center to the Owen Graduate School of Business at Vanderbilt University as a Postdoctoral Researcher in Strategic Management.

Drawing upon his past experiences as a mental health counselor and executive consultant, his research examines how the past experiences of top executives shape their leadership behaviors. Through the lens of evolutionary theories of human motivation, he investigates how historical events, systemic barriers, and social class origins influence the strategic decisions and career trajectories of leaders from marginalized backgrounds. He combines detailed qualitative insights with robust quantitative analyses to challenge existing theoretical paradigms in the fields of management and entrepreneurship.

Aten’s work has been published in the Global Strategy Journal and is at advanced stages of review at the Academy of Management Journal and Corporate Governance: An International Review.

Eric E. Griffith joined the Cook Center as a Postdoctoral Associate in 2021 before joining the Duke Center for the Study of Aging Postdoctoral Research Training Program in 2023. He completed his dissertation fieldwork in central Mexico, focusing on the experiences of familial caregivers for people living with Alzheimer’s disease. Eric’s research interests include biocultural anthropology, dementia, cognitive aging, health disparities, and mixed methods research.

As a postdoctoral fellow with the Cook Center, Eric is working on the NIH-funded project “The influence of religion/spirituality on Alzheimer’s Disease and its related dementias (ADRD) for African Americans. In 2024, his writing on community-engaged research with people living with dementia received a Publication of the Year Award from the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference.

Dr. Griffith recently accepted an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology position at Utah State University, where he will start in the fall of 2025.

Pak Hung Lam completed his Ph.D in Social Science from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in 2023 and was a Postgraduate Fellow at the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Yale University. Prior to his Ph.D., he graduated from Chinese University of Hong Kong with a B.Scs. in Economics and from National Taiwan University with a Master in Agricultural Economics.

His research focuses on agricultural, development, environmental, and health economics. I am also interested in Industrial policies and climate change. He is particularly interested in critical issues related to population health, economic development in Africa and Asia, and global environmental health and justice issues.Pak Hung will join the National Taiwan University in the Agricultural Economics Department as an assistant professor. He is grateful for his time at the Cook Center and the connections made have been invaluable to his professional development.

In Fall 2025, Cook Center Postdoctoral Research Fellow Dr. Quran Karriem will join the faculty at Syracuse University in the Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies. His research explores how historical and emerging forms of artificial intelligence and algorithmic technologies shape artistic production, culture, and communication.

While at the Cook Center, Dr. Karriem taught a GIRI course titled “Machine Learning and Digital Bias” and published several scholarly works, including Algorithmic Images and Recursive Epidermalization in Color Protocols (MIT Press, 2025) and “Machine Learning and Deep Remixability” in Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Visual Culture (2024).

A multimedia artist with an MFA and PhD, Karriem’s creative work includes performances and installations that integrate video, audio, and computational systems. His recent publications include “SOMA: A Speculative Database Aesthetics of ImageNet” (Brill, 2024) and “On Sonic Design” (Theater, Duke University Press/Yale School of Drama, 2020). He plans to maintain his affiliation with the Cook Center’s AI research initiatives while joining the Autonomous Systems Policy Institute and the Academic Alliance for AI Policy at Syracuse.

Sungmee Kim, Ph.D. began her academic journey studying international trade at a university in Korea before completing a degree in educational economics as a foreign exchange student at Georgia State University. She continued at Georgia State for her PhD in economics, where her dissertation focused on how policy influences educational outcomes, particularly through the lens of gender equity.

In 2023, she joined the Cook Center to pursue her interest in education and economics from an equity perspective. She has participated in departmental seminars in Duke’s economics department and worked on the NASCC-E survey conducting quantitative analysis. She has also mentored students in the HAYS program on education-focused projects, guest lectured in Inequality Studies courses, and attended the GIRI Capstone.

She recently presented her work at the Triangle Economics of Education Workshop 2025 and is grateful for the mentorship and opportunities the Cook Center has provided. Her work was recently published in Brown University’s Annenberg Institute Ed Working Papers series. Sungmee looks forward to further research and collaborative work advancing educational equity in her position as a Teaching Assistant Professor position at Illinois State University.

Will Damron, who taught History of Inequality in Spring 2024, focuses his research on the economic history of the American South. Before joining the Cook Center, he earned a PhD in Economics from Yale University and a BS from Davidson College.

During his time at the Cook Center, he contributed to the NASCC-E project and worked on a research paper exploring the historical economic development of the South through an inequality lens.

In Fall 2025, Damron will join the Department of Economics at the University of North Carolina Wilmington as a faculty member. He remains committed to producing historically grounded economic research that addresses questions of race, labor, and development in the U.S.

Xiongfei Li, Ph.D. began his journey with the Cook Center as a Postdoctoral Associate in 2023. During his time at the Cook Center, he participated in NASCC-E, a large-scale survey project across five cities focusing on entrepreneurship in communities of color, the DITE workshops, the Young Scholar Initiative, and numerous major international academic conferences, including APPAM, ASSA, EEA-ESEM, AERE, and EAERE, where he presented papers on gender inequality in the labor market and carbon policy spillovers.

He obtained his doctoral degree from the University of Southern California in 2023. His research interests include economic development and environmental and climate economics, covering topics such as population policy and gender gaps, improvements in telecommunication services and urban labor market dynamics, and global carbon policy spillovers. You can find his work on his academic website.

As Xiongfei transitions from the Cook Center, he will begin this Fall as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in China, continuing his research and teaching related to social equity and sustainability.

The most impressive aspect of his experience at the Cook Center is the interdisciplinary interaction and collaboration. The cohort includes exceptional scholars in Business Management, Strategy, Economics, Economic History, Public Policy, and Sociology, and the valuable experience of working and engaging with large groups significantly enriched his own research.

Graduates
We also celebrate the achievements of several of our student team members across academic levels:

Imari Smith recently earned her PhD in Sociology and Public Policy after more than five years with the Cook Center. Her relationship with the Center began shortly after earning her undergraduate degree from Duke, when she joined as a part-time Research Assistant. She worked on projects with Drs. Keisha Bentley-Edwards, Loneke Blackman-Carr, and Paul Robbins, and supported surveys for the Aaron Young Scholars Program.

While completing her MPH, Imari developed an interest in maternal and infant mortality and joined the Cook Center full-time as a Research Associate and Project Manager. She authored multiple briefs and focused her research on women’s health.

Under the mentorship of Dr. William A. “Sandy” Darity Jr., she shifted her career trajectory from medicine to academia and began her PhD in 2019. Her research explores the relationship between social inequities, health outcomes, and public policy. She has published scholarly work, participated in numerous fellowships, and served as an instructor for the HABASYS program in 2024.

Imari reflects on her time at the Cook Center as foundational, offering support, mentorship, and community throughout her doctoral studies. She now looks forward to a career in research, mentorship, and public health advocacy, especially in expanding access to health resources for communities of color.

Olanrewaju (Lanre) Adisa, M.D. began his journey with the Samuel DuBois Cook Center as an undergraduate research assistant in 2017, before returning in 2023 as a graduate research assistant while completing medical school. During his time at the Center, he contributed to several projects within the Health Equity Working Group, including a BMJ-commissioned analysis exploring the impact of structural racism and economic inequality on health disparities during the COVID-19 pandemic. He also assisted in developing a blog post confronting race-based medicine and examining how this form of racism is perpetuated and disseminated through medical misinformation. Lanre also led workshops for Durham Public School students as part of the Aaron Young Scholars Summer Research Program, introducing them to the fundamentals of academic research. Lanre earned his Doctor of Medicine (MD) from the Duke University School of Medicine.

As Lanre transitions from the Cook Center, he will start in the summer as a post-graduate year 1 (PGY-1) resident at The George Washington University Hospital, specializing in Emergency Medicine. He aspires to pursue further fellowship training in pediatric emergency medicine to care for patients and families across the lifespan.

One of the things Lanre enjoyed most about his time at the Cook Center was the opportunity to collaborate across disciplines, learning from gifted researchers and postdocs at the Center. Observing mentors and leaders like Dr. Keisha Bentley-Edwards deepened his commitment to advancing health equity by grounding research in the lived experiences of affected community members.

As we prepare for a new chapter in the Cook Center’s institutional journey, these individual transitions remind us of the broader mission we serve. Each person’s path forward is a testament to the Center’s commitment to fostering equity-minded scholars, practitioners, and change agents. We wish our colleagues, students, and fellows continued success and look forward to seeing the impact they will make in the world.