“I found Anna during a very dark time in my life where I was riddled with panic attacks daily, struggling to keep up in my career, conflicted about my long term relationship and unknowingly (read: poorly) navigating my trauma from facing lifelong racism and sexism. I was the rationalizing, type A, "I know I'm smart and I know what's wrong" person, but I couldn't seem to shake the constant unsettling feeling that I was lost and didn't know how to get out of the hole I was in. I found Anna on Psychology Today and she was immediately responsive, kind and understanding. She just got it. I remember crying to her in our first 1-minute intro session and she quickly scheduled us for our first full session. 

Rarely, do you have an idea of something in your head and reality meets your expectations. But, Anna was that. She practices long term therapy and dove into my life to help me break down things I had spent years unsuccessfully rationalizing. 

Unlike what some of my friends describe with their therapists, Anna isn't just here to validate every feeling or action. She gives me feedback, she tells me when I'm wrong, she helps me build better habits for the future. She's patient with me in my moments of trial and error. And last, but certainly not least (actually most), Anna has helped me find my voice as a woman of color. Before Anna, I debated finding a brown therapist who matched my demographic, but I often felt alienated by that community, not religious or cultural enough for one, sometimes too brown for another. Anna has embodied the true nature of an ally and has helped me when I needed guidance as a woman in her 30s navigating love, work and life. But, she has also been there to tell me when things that I had just come to accept as normal were, in fact, racist and sexist. She's given me names for the injustices and feelings I came across and helped me navigate all of the trauma I had been holding. From recommending books to educating me on psychosocial issues and race theory, Anna has given me the tools I needed to make my own informed decisions on issues in my life. Rather than telling me what was happening, she provided me the behavioral and contextual tools to get there myself. And it's all changed my life. I'm not the same person I was three years ago. 

She's a household name amongst my friends and I. There isn't often a time when we'll all be talking and someone doesn't ask, "Well, what would Anna say about this?!" She makes me laugh and appreciates all of my inappropriate humor, which is very important. I get this safe space every week where I get to be as honest as I want, without judgement, with someone who understands my life, who I am, and who I'm trying to be. My life has changed since finding Anna and I'm finally a version of myself that is more content, more empowered. I plan to never let her go.” 

“Dr. Anna Morgan-Mullane is without exaggeration the best professor and overall educator I have experienced through multiple degrees and institutions. From my very first class with her, I knew I needed her guidance and mentoring in my educational journey and throughout the rest of my career. She has not once hesitated to offer me all of the resources she has to ensure my growth and success. This is more than technical. She pays attention to every word and then tailors her professional relationship to meet those needs. The readings, resources, conferences, positions, and connections she recommends are based on her invested knowledge of my past experiences and future goals.

​I have encountered powerful educators. I have interacted with powerful inspirers. Dr. MM has somehow managed to effortlessly merge the two and then embed that into my heart and mind. She has a way of bringing out the best and naming things in me that I didn't know were possible. She believes in me, and challenges me to expand and deepen without demoralizing me. She makes me want to be a better student and human without pressure or manipulation. It is simply her presence, her quiet strength and understanding, that offers this.

She teaches and practices love and leverages her white-bodied privilege in ways that are bold and beyond any other teacher ​who claims to be an accomplice or co-conspirator. This is truly her life and she brings her students inside in a way that is boundaried but also necessarily transparent. She doesn't teach because she has to. She wants to. And that shows every single time. After multiple courses and projects, I still learn from her each time we meet.

Dr. MM knows that I am never at a loss for words (she reads and encourages every single one of them). But when I am asked to write about the impact of someone that is so immeasurable and incomparable, no amount of words seems sufficient.

Thank you for modeling for me what learning has always supposed to have been. And I hope to leave even a fraction of the footprint in my students' lives as you have in mine. “