2021 Conference

The Healing Wisdom of Ubuntu: Interconnectedness and the Soul of Mentorship

The 2021 Kathryn Epps Faculty Wellness Conference featured keynote speaker Dr. Shelly P. Harrell. The primary aims of this year's conference were to 1) explore the meanings, functions, and forms of mentorship for BIPOC women in the context of higher education, 2) apply the African ethic of Ubuntu (the interconnectedness underlying our humanity) to mentorship, and 3) experience and enhance “mutual mentoring” (sharing collective wisdom) among attendees.

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  Shelly P. Harrell, Ph.D.

  Dr. Shelly Harrell is a Harvard-educated and UCLA-trained psychologist who is currently a Professor at Pepperdine University’s Graduate School of Education and Psychology. She is a licensed psychotherapist, a certified meditation teacher, and a member of the faculty of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy. She has been helping, healing, mentoring, teaching, and training for over 30 years. Her soulfulness approach represents an integration of her extensive professional experience and is informed by cultural, African-centered, and liberation psychologies, contemplative practices, and stress science. She teaches meditation and mindfulness from an orientation that incorporates cultural, psychospiritual, and sociopolitical considerations for resilience, healing, and liberation. She has published, presented, and consulted widely in the areas of culture and psychotherapy, mindfulness in sociocultural and sociopolitical context, racism-related stress and mental health, resilience and psychological well-being among Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), and intergroup relations. Among her passions are music, dance, wisdom quotes, and the color purple.