About Us
Purpose –
To inspire and empower people and institutions who are committed to advancing health equity and social justice.
Mission –
We advance health equity and social justice by providing educational training and programs in the application of intersectionality to research, with fidelity to its history and core themes.
Vision –
To close the health equity gap through the application of intersectionality to research and practice.
Values –
We are critical theorists.
We are collaborative learners.
We are advocates.
We are dismantlers.
Lisa Bowleg, PhD, MA
Lisa Bowleg, PhD, MA is the Founder and CEO of the Intersectionality Training Institute and a leading scholar of the application of intersectionality to social behavioral science health equity research and practice.
An internationally recognized thought leader, Dr. Bowleg’s research and scholarship have prompted researchers, practitioners, and institutions to acknowledge the limitations of conventional theoretical and empirical approaches that focus on individual-level cognitive and behavioral factors exclusively, and embrace critical theoretical frameworks (such as intersectionality) that examine how multiple and intersecting systems of oppression (e.g., racism, sexism, heterosexism, and class exploitation) create and sustain social, health, and economic inequities for historically oppressed groups.
The HIV/AIDS epidemic has played a foundational role in Dr. Bowleg’s career. Dr. Bowleg began her career as a state HIV/AIDS policy analyst at GWU’s AIDS Policy Center Project in 1988, and later as a consultant to the Women and AIDS Project at the Center for Women Policy Studies. She transitioned to conducting HIV prevention research with U.S. Black women and men when she began her doctoral studies in Applied Social Psychology at the George Washington University (GWU) in 1992.
Informed by intersectionality and social-structural frameworks, her primary research program used mixed methods to examine the effects of social-structural stressors (e.g., unemployment, incarceration, police brutality), intersectional stigma and discrimination, and protective factors on the mental, substance use, HIV, and physical health outcomes of U.S. Black men at diverse intersections of socioeconomic status and sexuality. A second program of research investigated the mental health effects of intersectional discrimination and protective factors among U.S. Black lesbian, gay and bisexual people.
She served as a principal investigator (PI) of three National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 grants, one R21 grant, and as joint-PI of another R01 grant and T32 grant. She is also a former PI of the WK Kellogg Foundation-funded, Intersectionality Policymaking Toolkit Project.
She is the author of more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and has published widely in high impact journals such as American Psychologist, the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH), and Health Psychology. A former Associate Editor at AJPH and former Editor of AJPH’s “Perspectives from the Social and Behavioral Sciences” section, Bowleg is now Associate Editor Emeritus of AJPH, and an editorial board member or editorial consultant at Social Science and Medicine, Health Psychology, Archives of Sex Behavior, and Journal of Sex Research.
In recognition of her contributions to the field, Dr. Bowleg has received numerous awards. Her most recent awards include: the 2021 GWU Oscar and Shoshana Trachtenberg Prize for Scholarship (Research); the 2022 Lawrence W. Green Paper of the Year Award from Health, Education and Behavior for her 2021 article, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House”: Ten Critical Lessons for Black and Other Health Equity Researchers of Color”; and the 2023 James S. Jackson Memorial Award from the National Institutes of Mental Health.
In December 2025, Dr. Bowleg retired from the faculty of the George Washington University where she had served as Professor of Applied Social Psychology since 2013. She is also a former Director of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Core of the DC Center for AIDS Research.
Renowned for her engaging, accessible, and intellectually rigorous presentation style, Professor Bowleg adroitly blends cross-disciplinary theoretical and empirical knowledge with real-world examples to help audiences envision opportunities to develop novel, critical, and innovative research projects, interventions and policies to eliminate intersectional health inequities, not simply document that they exist.
Dr. Bowleg received her B.S. in Psychology from Georgetown University, her Master’s in Public Policy with a concentration in Women’s Studies from GWU, and her doctorate in Applied Social Psychology from GWU.
