Real Talk Real Impact
Real Talk, Real Impact is about honest, down-to-earth conversations that unpack the messy, real-life truths about health, equity, and community. We connect everyday experiences and stories to public health in ways that feel like a kiki with your friends. This is where fun, unfiltered and enlightening can all be one. Each episode aims to spark curiosity, highlight new careers and opportunities in the public health space, to leave listeners with actionable insights they can carry into their own lives or communities.
Real Talk Real Impact
Why Black Women Are Still Being Failed by Public Health with Brittany “Brit” M. Williams, Ph.D.
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Black women continue to be disproportionately impacted by HIV, yet they're too often left out of the conversation. It's time to change that.
In this powerful episode, Dr. Marissa Robinson sits down with Dr. Brit Williams to unpack the realities of Black women's health, HIV prevention, PrEP awareness, and the barriers that continue to affect Black communities.
Together, they explore why community matters, how workplace experiences shape our advocacy, and why self-care isn't a luxury; it's necessary for sustainable impact.
Whether you're a public health professional, MPH student, health educator, HIV prevention advocate, or simply passionate about health equity and social justice, this conversation offers practical insights and an honest look at the work still ahead.
🎙️ In this episode:
• Why Black women must be centered in HIV prevention
• The truth about PrEP, stigma, and condom negotiation
• Building stronger communities through advocacy and sponsorship
• Why rest and self-care are essential for public health professionals
...and much more.
Subscribe for more conversations on public health careers, Black women's health, HIV prevention, health equity, community engagement, and leadership.
Chapters
0:00 Introduction
@2:54 How did you end up doing the work you do today?
@11:00 Biggest misconceptions or barriers preventing Black women from seeing PrEP as something that's for them?
@21:53 What have Black women taught you about HIV prevention and sexual health that public health institutions still need to learn?
@29:54 Workplace lessons you've learned throughout your career that you wish someone had taught you earlier?
@47:46 Where does public health show up in your work, even behind the scenes?
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💕 Instagram – Health tips & behind-the-scenes moments
We have to show up for one another. We have to be our biggest brand ambassadors. We have to be our biggest sort of advocates, our biggest cheerleaders. We also have to sponsor one another as black women, right? So often people always talk about mentorship or I need a mentor or I need a no, you don't. Sometimes you just need a sponsor. You need somebody to sign off their name on your name to get what you need. And often for me, it has been other black women who've engaged in that sponsorship for me. It's been other black women who've provided that mentorship for me. Obviously, also black gay men have held me down. Um, love my family. Black women, I do, but black women have really shown me that it is being community-centric and being um sort of a girl's girl that is going to get you further than choosing the opposite of those things in terms of things we have to learn. I think it's the exact opposite of that, right?
SPEAKER_01Welcome to the Real Talk Real Impact Podcast. This is the podcast where we center the voices and lived experiences and bold ideas shaping the future of public health. I'm your host, Dr. Mercer Robinson, and I'm joined here by my sister, my soror, and my homegirl, Dr. Brit Williams. Welcome, sis. How are you doing today? I'm doing well. Hey, y'all.
unknownHey.
SPEAKER_01So before we get into this, I'll need to tell the people a little bit about you because the resume is stacked, y'all. And if you don't know about Dr. Britt, you need to get into it. So she is an internationally recognized speaker, public scholar, educator, researcher, and personal prep user and advocate. She currently serves as an associate professor of education and public health sciences and offers consulting and speaking to a range of organizations, entities, and groups. As an interdisciplinary education and public health scholar, Dr. Williams has received more than, and I repeat, more than $2 million. Hello? Somebody turn us up in foundation and federal funding. She's presented over 200, 200 conferences, y'all, sessions, keynotes, and workshops worldwide, period. And she has published over 40 peer-reviewed manuscripts and book chapters. Dr. Britt has previously served on the hashtag IMHIV possible with Black Women's Health Imperative and frequently uses her social media and platforms to advocate for sex positive women forward sexual education. Siblings, ladies, gentlemen, and all those who are under the sound of my voice, give a virtual warm welcome to Dr. Britt Williams.
unknownWoo!
SPEAKER_00Thank you, thank you. I don't know. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01I know it's like, oh yeah, I really am her. I'm her. Yes, you are. You are her. You are her. And anytime that I can gas you up, you know, you know, I'm gonna do that. Okay, so we're gonna jump right in. And before we, you know, unpack some of the real nitty-gritty questions. Let's go ahead and set the landscape and tell the people a little bit about your story and how did you end up doing the work that you do today?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I started out in education. Actually, scratch that. When I was growing up, I thought I was gonna be a lawyer because I'm a yapping ass bitch. And so screaming, I'm serious. I'm serious. And so I think about listening to the young doll. That young doll blommer. She liked to argue, so I sent that bitch to law school. That was going to be me, right? I took the L set, I did the whole things, I was ready, locked and loaded. And I took a graduate education class at the Columbia University Law School, and I was like, these people are insufferable. This is absolutely not nominal. Not insufferable. Baby, I was over it and done. So I was like, let me get my A in, you know, education law and policy, and let me go ahead and dip slide right out and figure out what the hell else I'm about to do for the rest of my life because this is not it. And so as I was thinking about that, I thought, okay, I'm really good at school. I love academic research. Let me cut some things out. But I started out in education administration. So I'm a first generation college graduate.
SPEAKER_01I knew Come on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Just read that bio. But did y'all just hear that? First generation. So not only is she iconic, but she's a first generation icon. So let's be clear. Be clear.
SPEAKER_00Okay, keep going. Sorry. You're so sweet. No, but I am like I'm super first gen. So I've been joking that I'm gonna come up with a research article about a theory of super first gen because there are first gen college students and graduates who have like an aunt or an uncle or someone who's not their parents or guardians who went to college. I didn't even have that. Like I am literally the first person in my biological family on both sides of my family, um, of all of my first cousins, aunts and uncles, second cousins to obtain a college degree. And so I went to school and I was like, this is real easy. And I just kind of kept going. And so I ended up in education administration, specifically on the higher ed side. So I was running residence halls, which it is kind of absurd that we allow really, like, at least in my case, hot 22-year-olds to run a residence hall full of uh people that they were literally in college with, like yesterday. Right, right. I can't believe I had that much responsibility as a 22-year-old who thought this was a good idea. It started out over there. I loved it, I was having a good experience, and then I wasn't, right? And so I have this article on workplace policing, which we could circle back to that, right? Uh, because being a black woman at work, you're never alone. A white person. It's exhausting. It's exhausting. But I had this supervisor who was like, oh my god, and da-da-da-da. And she called me an ungrateful little bitch and all of these other things. And I was like, hmm, I wonder if other black women have these problems at work. And so you mix that with my former interest in law and my interest in being argumentative and always right. Um, words for Samantha Jones, okay? That's my girl off in K City. Yes. I am always right. Always never wrong. Okay, I need to figure out I gotta do something. I gotta document this. I need to figure out is this just a Brit Williams problem, or is this the problem that black women across the board are having? And so that's how I ended up in educational research. I wanted to think about the experiences of black women administrators, black women leaders, everyone from the black woman who's running a residence hall or working in career services to the one in athletics, to the one who's doing campus photography to the university president. How are they sort of navigating and experiencing the collegiate environment as a workplace and as an organizational entity? And so I was doing all of that, eventually became a graduate student for the second time because God forbid I stopped going to school. I don't know how to stop accumulating degrees. Yeah, you know, we we have an issue. We need to sit down. We do. We have a black girl meetup about how y'all is like, mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01Go ahead, go ahead, get another bag, another degree, another comma.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like why is our trauma response? It is a trauma response, and we gotta unpack that because people picked up on it and now they uh firing us left and right. You know, it's giving hater, it's giving hater. Yeah, you know, the yardstick's moving. You said it every time the the yardstick's moving every time a black woman accomplishes something, but every time it's hard to be a standard bearer, what can I say? Yeah, and we move. And so eventually I had fallen in love with a guy too, actually back to back here in Atlanta. They were both living with HIV, and I was like, hmm. And I went to this event that was put on by Sister Love in Atlanta. Shout out, shout out, Miss Belma Sister. But it was Sister Love actually put the event on. Yes. And then, you know, I had just finished Days On. Yes, mama Days on. Yes, yes, yes. I had just finished the quantitative methods courses for my doc program, so I'm like deep in my stats or whatever. And so one of the speakers did up here on the microphone and she's like, Oh, you know, here in Atlanta, black women are the fastest growing demographic for HIV. Bitch, what did she just say?
SPEAKER_01And the crowd went silent.
SPEAKER_00You gotta look, you're probably waiting for not here. Right, right, right. Bitch, that was me because I was like, oh shit. And I'm already dating these two men who are living and thriving with HIV. Hold on, I gotta do something about this. And that's how I ended up on prep as like a personal prep user. And so I am now a decade into being on prep, and it is honestly incredible like how far prep and public health has come. And so eventually, and all you know, here we go, over a teaching black woman, I decided to layer public health onto my education. Education back. The HIV stuff started more personally, but when I think about my work on like black women and wellness or black women's well-being, all of that is driven from thinking about and listening to them talk about their workplace experiences, most of which is tantamount to physiological violence. It's violence, it's weathering, right? Researchers talk about how black women and black people physiologically are weathering away because of stress, because of racism, because of all these other things. And so I ended up just deciding to merge all of this because I'm a, you know, I'm a liberal arts kid. I went to a small liberal arts college. Long live college, rest in peace. Um, but it it's the place that taught me that I can do anything and I don't have to choose a box. And so I was like, fuck it, I'm gonna add all of this to my research agenda. I'm gonna walk around the country or uh fly around the country and the globe talking about all of these things that interest me, and I'm gonna do whatever I want. And no one can make me do only one thing. So that's how I ended up with this assortment of things that are driven partly by personal experience, partly by things I'm seeing in my communities and the communities that I care about, and then partly by what do we as black women need, and what is my responsibility to answer that call.
SPEAKER_01Wow. All right, well, that's all we have for you today. Thank you so much. Um, there's really nothing else to discuss. I mean, good God. Uh there's so much to unpack there. And for me, I think there's so much synergy in what you said, and there's so much conviction, and there's so much like, oh yes, and oh my god, I get that. And oh yes. So hopefully, to some of our listeners, you've resonated and struck some heart strings for some of the things that you shared. And I want to take a little bit of deeper dive into your HIV prevention work because that is a lot of how our paths have intertwined and crossed and become soul sisters. And I think for those who are new to academia, new to even just learning about podcasts or learning about leaders or somebody who is trying to be a first generation student, or even a first generation anything, or a let's take it a step back, a first of anything. It is a lot of weight, it's a lot of expectations, it's a lot of things that you have to navigate. So I want to just for a second pause and talk about the work that you do around HIV prevention. And specifically when we're talking about black women, I think still we're having conversations of black women don't see themselves in the media, don't see themselves as at quote unquote risk, or they don't have reasons to think that they could ever acquire HIV. So let's dive a little deeper into that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, oh my gosh, there are so many things going through my mind right now. And the chief one being, right, this started for me because I didn't want the partners that I was engaged with and in these committed relationships with to feel like the onus of maintaining my HIV negative status was on them.
SPEAKER_01Right? Like I don't want to- Can you can you can you tell our audience a little bit more? Like, what do you mean by that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So, you know, if someone is living and thriving with HIV, if they're in care and they reach undetectable status, right? You equals you, undetectable equals untransmittable, then there is a very reduced likelihood that I would acquire HIV from this person. Whether we have protected, partially protected sex or unprotected sex or whatever, right? But I like, I don't know what it's like to live with HIV. I can imagine it's fucking exhausting. It is emotionally taxing, it's probably physically taxing. Like we know what it does physiologically to the body when you are trying to fight to maintain life, right? So if this person is already over here dealing with all of that, why should they then also have to worry about if I don't take my medication or if I'm not adhering or if I'm not doing this or if I'm not doing that, I'm going to also impact Brit's life. And so for me, I started taking prep because I was like, well, let me take some of that burden and worry and anxiety off of you as someone that I have chosen to be in a committed relationship and sexual relationship with. And so that was a big piece of my sort of foray and entry into that. And so as I thought about that, I was like, wait, if I'm doing this for the folks that I've been engaged with over the course of time, and I've run into so many people, I've been I've been joking with some of my friends that like I am a magnet for people who have long-standing chronic illnesses and conditions because people see me online, and I'm like, no, I won't let something like HIV get in the way of me finding love. And so people who are like, oh my God, someone will love me, end up finding me and they're like, help me walk me through this, talk to me about how I date, and how do I disclose and how do I do all of these things. And so I'm having these conversations in the DMs and in the privacy of places, places like Clubhouse, right during the pandemic in particular, were some some spaces where people, I mean, people just disclose everything to me, which honestly is the highest honor because first of all, I'm like an auntie, like little girlfriend to a lot of random people who have no idea who I am, but they know that I'm genuine, I mean what I say, and if I don't know the answer, I'm gonna find the right thing. I'm gonna find it for you the answer. We're gonna go get it. Yeah, and so all of that led me to think about okay, if I know all of this, what is my responsibility to other black women, right? Because I wasn't sleeping with black women who were living with HIV, but you go back to that moment where I'm dating these folks who are living and thriving with HIV. I'm also kind of hearing all of this as a grad student. I just finished my stats class, right? Like, think about the whole corpus of my experience. I now have a moral obligation to tell other black women what I know. And that is why I do things like I am HIV possible with black women's health imperative. That looks like showing up to speak on panels. It looks like talking about this on social media openly. It looks like when people post really ignorant, people post some ignorant shit on the internet. I mean, people every day walk out of every size of their body, every hole, every orifice. Like if words can come out, people will let it come out.
SPEAKER_01People gonna do it, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so I felt like I had to do something to make sure people had scientifically and medically accurate information. And so that's how I ended up using my social platforms to do some of that. I don't know if that's answering the question, but like that's really what's on my mind, right? Because I'm like, I can't leave this up to chance, especially if I'm sitting across from experts like Dayson and all these other people who are saying, like, black women, this is what it looks like for you, and you've got to think about this. And if you've moved to Atlanta, and I focus a lot on college students because higher education is the demographic that I research and study, right? So if you didn't grow up in Atlanta and you don't know a whole lot about HIV, you could be moving from a state where you go from a one in 75 chance of acquiring HIV to a one in 15 just based on the zip code and zip code.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, and so And a lot of people have been under their parents' insurance or weren't even engaging in any sort of exploration. And now you you you out the you out the nest, and now you letting your freak flag fly.
SPEAKER_00Which is cool. Like I'm just cool. So let the freak flag fly, like but let's do it responsibly and have all of the resources, right?
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And do you think because y'all are scared, right? But my thing is that the gag for me is y'all be so quick to bust it wide open and tell them to bring it back, and yet you're scared to talk about a status of HIV or even getting tested together, or even talking about what that would look like in tandem with each other before we even lay it down. And that to me is nuts because you are sharing spirits, you are you are exchanging things. Hey, I'm not I'm respectability politics aside, I'm not shaming anybody's, I'm not yucking anybody's young. Be clear. But what I need for my people to do, and when I say my people, I mean anybody under the sound of my voice, to understand is that you have a responsibility that if you are going to engage in any activity, any activity, you should be trying to figure out what is the best place for me to have in terms of information and a level of awareness so that I can make the best informed decisions possible. And I don't think people are doing that, and nor do they care, or they think I am never doing those things, or I'm not a part of said community, or insert whatever misinformation or BS stigma that's out there. Everyone's HIV possible, what you just said, and I think that that is the one thing that people are you know talking about or are so ashamed to talk about. But there's a whole slew of new uh conversations that need to be happening. We got this TM7 rolling around, that's a newer infection. There's there's STDs and SCIs, there's antimicrobial resistance strands of gonorrhea going around. Okay, so be clear. This is this is just one of uh a dichotomy of issues, and I just think responsibility is needed across the board. No one's immune.
SPEAKER_00I'm a yes and now here's why I'm a yes and here's my thing specifically for why I talk to black women, right? I think there is a perception of black women that we are super women, we're so powerful, we speak up, we advocate, and all of those things can be concurrently true until we get into a situation where power differentials and the desire to be liked shape how we show up. Now, what the hell do I mean by that? Condom negotiation is a real thing. I have so many sisters who you at the nail salon, you don't even like how HomeGirl did your nails. You can't even talk back to the person at the nail salon who did your nails wrong. So, how the hell I'm gonna expect you to talk back to somebody who got you on the bed with your pants pulled down, ready to go do whatever it is that you all have decided to do, and now you're scared to say you have to use a condom or you have to think about this or show me your my chart or whatever the case may be. And so I think for me, that's also part of why I talk so much about prep because it is a self-centered, self-started, self-motivated way for you to be able to engage in an added layer of protection if you don't know how to tell somebody to get the fuck up off of you, or you're not gonna have sex with me if you can't show me your test results, or if you can't do whatever. Right? I was just reading online on threads about a story where um some guy, you know, the him and the woman had been dating for a few months and they went and got tested together, and I guess his results came back and something showed. And so he was trying to show her an old screenshot instead of a screenshot with the date from the day that they went. And so she was like, nah, you're playing with me. But what if you don't have the discernment or the knowledge or the like, what if you're not even looking close enough to notice those kinds of things? And so I think it's a yes, we need to think about personal responsibility, but also let's be real a lot of people are scary and haven't flexed that muscle and haven't developed that muscle to get away from that scare and that.
SPEAKER_01I totally a hundred percent no, I I a hundred percent agree, and that is why I think our platforms are so important and so needed and are so niche because people are really not talking about these conversations and don't know how to approach it, or don't feel comfortable even learning about it, or feel ashamed for even asking questions, or being curious, or wanting to dive deeper, or are scared of what the response will be or the shame or just all of the things. So, all of that is very much a real circumstance of the work that we do. And I think God put us on this earth to not only spread the knowledge and awareness that we have and to not gatekeep, right? To share it and to each one teach one, but also of that it's not going to be a one-size-fits-all. There are going to be instances where there's nuance. There's going to be instances where we have to talk about some other social determinants of health that are not being talked about either. And just this system that has never really been built for us that we have to eventually navigate and try to understand where do we fit, where can we be our best selves, and where can we center pleasure, our wants, our desires, and the things that we essentially want at the end of the day. If I just want to get a nut, I just want to get a nut, and that's it. Maybe you want to be in a committed relationship, maybe you want to be for everybody. I don't know. Maybe you don't want to be with anybody, but you like to look. I don't, whatever your your thing is, that's cool. But let's also figure out how you can be best educated to move forward. And this moves me to my second question of how you have essentially built an entire career at the intersection of not only scholarship, but also advocacy, community engagement, and badassness, whatever whatever you want to call it. So, what have black women taught you? And this can be related to HIV prevention or also just. Public health. And um what are some things that we still need to learn?
SPEAKER_00I mean, in terms of what haven't black women taught me, right? I think would be the easiest way to answer that question. I feel like everything that I'm learning, it is, you know, because of black women, it's inspired by black women. I think some of the chief things that I've picked up is that nobody is coming to save us, right? All we got is we and us as black women. I'm somebody who started out on Twitter like back in the early years of Twitter. I had to nuke my first one. She was famous, girl. She was famous. She was a famous girl. And so, which is, you know, the racism we experience is um is gendered, and the the gender discrimination we experience is racialized for people who don't know Massage Noir. Just gotta throw that in there. But um I was like deep in these internet streets and kind of fighting for my life. And so some of the chief things that I think about I learned from black women is that we have to congregate around one another. We have to show up for one another. We have to be our biggest brand ambassadors, we have to be our biggest sort of advocates, our biggest cheerleaders. We also have to sponsor one another as black women, right? So so often people always talk about mentorship or I need a mentor or I need a no, you don't. Sometimes you just need a sponsor, you need somebody to sign off their name on your name to get what you need. And often for me, it has been other black women who've engaged in that sponsorship for me. It's been other black women who've provided that mentorship for me. Obviously, also black gay men have held me down. Um love my family. Yes, we love we love our family. I do, but black women have really shown me that it is being community-centric and being um sort of a girl's girl that is going to get you further than choosing the opposite of those things.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_00In terms of things we have to learn, I think it's the exact opposite of that, right? Like far too many of us, and I say this as a southerner, I'm from Atlanta. I'm ATL born, I'm ATL bred. When I die, I'm gonna be ATL dead. I love my city.
SPEAKER_01I'm and you know what? Okay.
SPEAKER_00I said what I said, and I ain't changing it. I do. I love Atlanta. It is it everywhere I am, Southern ground is. I say this as somebody who's employed in New England, right? Everywhere I go, Southern ground is, and at the same time, um, so much of the culture in the South is around having a man by any means, being in a relationship by any means, having a partner or being partner by any means. And I think sometimes that causes us to betray that sisterhood that I'm talking about that I've learned from black women because it feels more important to be attached to someone or to have a man's name attached to you. Now I recognize I'm saying this as somebody who is perfectly happy being single, and I also am really tired of us as black women like having to make ourselves small, of us choosing to put these other things before us that don't necessarily serve us. And so I think that's an area of improvement, not only for us as a collective of black women, but something that I try to aspire to live up to every day. And do I live up to that every day? Probably not. Am I 90 10? Most likely, right? And so that's part of my North Star and the thing that's like uh my guiding light tomorrow from the back, from the back of the room, right? And so I I think those are some some cheap things. I think the other piece, and I've learned a lot of this from being in a community with black women in the kink community and black women um sex workers and black women who do sexual education. We have got to start putting our pleasure first. I think for so many in the black community, we don't even have real powerful, meaningful, deep conversations around sex.
unknownYep.
SPEAKER_00So if we're not getting that at home, we're not learning it, we're not practicing it, we end up in these situations where sex effectively becomes something that happens to us instead of something that happens with us. And I think for so many black women, it's hard for us to take that ownership and that sexual power and sort of reclaim it, and it's necessary for us to do that in order to move forward, not only as individuals because we deserve it, but also as a community.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and the point I want to drive home just a little bit further for that is we have been Jezebeled, we have been poked, prodded, we have been the subject of so many different uh public health crises and mistakes. And there's so much distrust, mistrust, and and all the things. And uh I feel like our generation is kind of in a space of deja vu, of like, we've seen some of these advancements that our parents' generations and our grandparents' generations never had the opportunity to see of first, or uh just the percentages of black women or black men or just the black community going up in the right direction. But then you've seen some things just be taken from us, or we're having to pivot, or we're having to not lean on our academic backgrounds or our education or or what have you, or our identities to make sure that we can take a stand and we can show up in these spaces. Um it also feels a little bit surreal sometimes because it's like, is anybody hearing the messages that we're saying? Because we're doing the work, we're we're trying to close the gap, but behavior change is one of the hardest, hardest things to achieve. Uh hello. And then when you also come uh complicate that with the current environment and all the things that we're dealing with here in the US and globally, it it is really hard. And public health right now is taking a huge hit. I think folks who are doing public service are doing uh are feeling it. Folks in academia are feeling it. I think everybody's feeling it, especially at the gas tank and at the grocery store. But that's a story for another day. Um so with that, uh I I just wanted to note that it's okay not to be okay right now. Yeah, we are all trying to collectively move ahead and move forward. And I I love the thought of Sankofa of we can't move forward without acknowledging our past. And so I think you've done a beautiful job at acknowledging the places and spaces that you've been and where you want to continue to go moving forward. And I'm just so very proud of you for all that you've been able to accomplish. And I haven't even known you for very long, it's only been a couple of years. I think we met in 2022, and it's 2026, but it feels like I've known you my entire life. And I think when you're meant to meet somebody, you're meant to meet somebody, and when a girl gets it and you just get it and you don't have to explain it, that's something special. And I felt that as soon as we linked up, I was like, Oh, oh, she gets it. Oh yeah. Oh, you you won't pro you you talking to talking, walking the wall. Oh girl, we gonna be friends. And from that day on, I think we were at the biomedical HIV prevention conference in Vegas in 2022, and it was like right after they had like opened this pearly gates of freedom uh to releasing some of the travel restrictions and whatnot. And I think it was in April of 2022, and so to fast forward to June of 2026 and to see all the work that we have continued to do together and will continue to do together, it's really iconic. So let's keep going. Yes, of course. So let's keep moving and talk about some of our listeners. So some of our listeners, this is our first season, so shout out to Real Health Impact LC and Real Talk Impact Real Impact Podcast. Many of our listeners are navigating workplace challenges, are dealing with burnout, difficult colleagues, feeling undervalued, budget cuts, staffing cuts, trying to figure out is this really what I want to do for the rest of my life? I hate what I do for a living. Can I go into something else? I'm a second away from creating an OnlyFans. You know, like the people are really trying to figure things out. Okay. Yeah. So can you share some workplace lessons that you've learned throughout the years in your career? And what do you wish someone had maybe taught you earlier on in your career?
SPEAKER_00Oh, I think the biggest thing I wish someone had taught me earlier in my career is that working harder will not help me to become more noticed. It will just end up with more work. More work. More work. Did you get on, y'all? More work. Here you go. More work. Recognition. It is not necessarily emotions, it is not necessarily pay raises, right? I I think about for me at one point um at my university, I think I had published like seven research articles in one year, which the the rolling average is two a year, and they counted on a two-year rolling average, four every every two years. So it could be one and three or zero and four, whatever. So here I am with seven in a year, and I rolled up here. Extra I remember I asked my leadership for a raise, and they were like, You're doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing. Well, am I? Because I've outperformed everybody else in this motherfucker, and I know that because I look at this TV every year. I look at it every year. Really? Because they're looking at them published. There are people who haven't published since the day that you hired me. Are you sure that this is exactly what I'm supposed to be doing? And so I wish that I said what I said, and I'm not changing it. There are people, right? I work at a research one university who don't live up to research one standards. So for me as a black man, I don't get leeway and flexibility and the ability to not live up to what the mission and vision and values of an institution that I'm a part of is, right? And I wish that in the same way that we've all learned this lesson word to Olivia Pope, word to Carrie Washington, word to Scandal, word to her daddy, that we have to be twice as good to get half as much as what other people got. In addition to that lesson, we should have also learned what it was going to cost us physiologically, what it was going to cost us mentally, what it was going to cost us socially, and what it was going to cost us when we are surrounded by people who make the same amount of money as us or more than us who do half as quality work as we do. Because it's not just being twice as good, it's also them being twice less me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Mediocrity.
SPEAKER_00I need it, I needed that lesson earlier, right? And so I think right now I'm on a very real recent myself kick. I'm on sabbatical for this next academic year. Praise him.
SPEAKER_01Amen. Praise him.
SPEAKER_00But I don't get my full salary while I'm on sabbatical. And so what does that mean? It means that I've got to hustle and I've got to do this. And I don't have generational wealth first in college student, right? So I have all of these other things that I have to think about and do and whatever as part of this process. But the root of sabbatical is rest, but you don't get to rest in the academy because they are going to take every ounce of anything from you. And I wish that elder black women had really sat me down, or or just elders in general had set me down and really let me know that loyalty to a job does not guarantee loyalty back to me because these institutions will fire us not care and get rid of us as soon as it is politically, socially, or financially convenient for them. And we feel all of this ownership because we care about the work, or in my case, I care about my students, and I want to be the professor that I never had, or whatever the case may be. And I say this I had dope professors, so I mean I had a really good educational experience again. And two things can be true. And so I wish that was something that I had learned. And then what was the first half of the question? Because you you sent me down a you sent me down a porch.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna take you to church real quick. Let me give you a sermon. So that folks are navigating workplace challenges and burnout, difficult colleagues. Word out yourself. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I I know that sounds and it can feel trite, and I know it can feel really scary to recenter ourselves. But I think if some of us practice small acts of resistance, and those small acts of resistance are all rooted in taking care of our individual selves and the people who have our backs. I think, especially for minoritized folks, that can be life altering, right? I I think those micro um acts of resistance are really going to be the things that help us to get through. I think also as we're navigating some of this, figuring out what kind of collective power do we have, how do we harness it, and how do we use it for the betterment of everyone who is suffering, right? We're living under late stage capitalism in the United States. Let's just call a thing a thing. It is hard as hell out here. And so, what do I have to give? What do I need from people I'm in community with? And how do I make sure I am giving as much as I'm taking when I have the capacity to? And when I don't have that capacity, how do I take what I need and then think about how to be a responsible steward of the things that people have given to me? I think is a really good opportunity for a lot of us. And so for me, that's looked like how am I donating to food banks? Um, I recently lost almost a hundred pounds, and so how did I decide to find what? Shout out, come on. How do I find working class people who need business professional calls or whatever the case may be? And how am I taking it to places where those people are? And not just, oh, I need to make a profit off of this or sell it or whatever, but literally like finding a young woman who's about to have her first job, who's the size that I was, and saying, Here, this will help you, right? Like, what are those like tiny tangible ways that I can improve my neighbor's life? I think those are some things I'm thinking about because it's hard out here.
SPEAKER_01It is, and it's almost sometimes uncomfortable to unlearn some of the things that you've done your whole career or your whole life or whatever you've been exposed to. And sometimes we model those things, sometimes we see those things, and social media is a highlight reel. And I have to remind my mentees that social media is literally brain altering, and it is making things seem like you have overnight success.
SPEAKER_00It is making people what'd I say it takes 10 years to be an overnight success?
SPEAKER_01I've heard that and and I whoo it has been a year of ups and downs and all arounds, and I'm not alone in that. And I think the the biggest takeaway from all of this is trying to figure out how you can become unmovable. How you learn, okay, you have haters, okay, you have people that don't want you to be successful. Okay, so how are you going to negate what they are doing? How are you going to yet still rise? How are you still going to say, okay, despite all the things that are going on around me that was never built for me in the first place? I'm going to still do what I need to do to show up for my family or to make a difference and so that my name is a household name. As black women, we always have our cape and we're always thinking about other people. And we are the backbones of so many institutions, so many organizations, and so many of us never get our flowers, never get recognized, never even get a thank you, or never get the sabbaticals, don't get the awards, don't get their names put on buildings and all the things. So I love the work that we are continuing to do, which is bringing and shedding light to not only HIV, to HIV prevention, to PrEP, to infectious disease work, to academia, to public health, but it's to all the things in between that as well. And at the end of the day, we ruin for everybody black, and I do that unapologetically, and I don't feel bad about it. And I'm so appreciative of all the things that have shaped me into the person I am today. And using that same kind of motto for the work that we do in mentorship and in trying to be selfish and focusing on ourselves, it can feel like we're crabs in a barrel sometimes, and we are our biggest problem in addition to not having the same opportunities as some other folks. Um, but we're not gonna worry about what other people got going on because we gotta worry about what's in front of us. And while we get ready to close here, I wanted to just do a quick shameless plug side note about all we got is we and us. And I would love to just let our listeners and our audience know a little bit about the project, about what you and I have been working on for two years and what it looks like when we stay the course, we do it unfunded, we do it because we care, we do it because we're ten toes down for the communities we serve, and we're not doing it for the notoriety and for the names and the recognition. We're doing it because we matter, and we're doing it because we want to hold space. So I would love to turn it over to you to share a little bit more about all we got is we and us.
SPEAKER_00Sorry, I have a fruit fly because it's fine.
SPEAKER_01Screaming because when you were doing this, I was like, I don't know if she's yesing because you're just excited to talk about all the guys, we and us, or if there's a bug.
SPEAKER_00Okay, you know, I eat a lot of fruit in the summer.
SPEAKER_01Okay, gotta keep the temple too.
SPEAKER_00Kind of hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, yeah. I've been drinking. Watermelon.
SPEAKER_01Watermelon. Uh uh-huh. Get out of my head.
SPEAKER_00No, thank you, thank you for that tee up. Thank you for that tee up. So, all we got is we and us, uh, Black American Women in the Fight for Prep is the name of the edited book that we are putting together for all of you who are listening. And I I don't even remember when I brought this to you, but I was like, I have an idea, and we should do this. And you were so gung-ho, and I was like, does she know she's about to walk the plank with me? I don't think she I don't think she knows what she just signed up for because she's gonna be like, right, you goofy one and goofy two, like okay, sure. I want to be with a Bernie Sands joke, but I'm gonna hold it in. Yeah, okay. This is this is labor, this is work. But the project is really thinking about how do we amass sort of the first ever volume on black women, by black women, for black women, and prep and HIV prevention, right? Because black women have really been relegated to the margins of the biomedical HIV prevention landscape for far too long, right? For me to be a cisgender woman who largely sleeps with men who've been on prep for 10 years is basically unheard of. Like, I don't know anyone else who's been on prep as long as me who is a cis woman. Like, I I if you exist, please reveal yourself. I'd love to know who you are when you start a little group chat or something. Um, because people always like, oh my God, you take this medication. My teeth are here, my coochie still work, the titties is like the body is body, and everything is fine, all of my vitals are good, and I go every couple of months to make sure so everybody please relax. Yeah. And I thought it was important for us to write about this because we have these conversations, people like, oh, black women, black women need to reach black women, but I'm like, but black women are doing this work. So who are the black women already doing the work? How do we amplify it? How do we sort of chronicle and write into the canon, especially right now in this age of misinformation, of disinformation, of deleting rigorous scientific information? How do I really sort of storify and chronicle what black women have been doing to help other black women? And that was like my vision for this project. And you were foolish enough to agree to something on it with me. Yes. And so I've been a part of a lot of edited books. I've written chapters in, I don't know, nine or ten edited books, but I have never done one myself as an editor. And so this has been a learning journey of what it takes to put together a project of this magnitude, especially because we're not just doing an academic project project. Like, yes, it is a book that is in my mind, I would love to see in schools of public health and medical schools and all of these places so that people can learn how to better um sort of engage black women in those spaces, but also organizers and people on the ground and folks at testing agencies, how are they thinking about where black women show up in the conversation? And so when you mix academics, community, nonprofit sector, policy folks, and we all have very different socialization styles around what it means to do work and around deadlines and around commitment and around follow through, that creates a whole bunch of different things, right? And so it's been a really fun experience. It's been a project that I I feel the most pride and joy about even the title alone, right? I think there's something to be said about when we as black women say that all we have is we and us and that that's all we've got, like we know what it looks like, right? It's not a mistake that over 300,000 black women have been pushed from the workforce in the last year and a half. It's not a mistake that black women are being highly targeted. It's not a mistake that all of these things are happening. And part of that is in the power and the possibilities and the transformative potential that black women have. And so this volume is an homage to that. It is a way to sort of render visible some of the work that maybe has gone unseen or unsung. It is also a way to give a roadmap to people in the future who may not know what have been some of the sort of strategies or opportunities or modalities that black women who are leading in the HIV space have really taken and given up. And how do we sort of replicate that for something good?
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm. Amen. And there's for those who don't know, you know, PrEP was first brought on the scene in 2012. 2012. And it's 2026 now, and yet there's still a disparity when it comes to women, and specifically black women. And the data showed us this, and we know that black women are also disproportionately impacted by HIV. And there are countless black women that didn't even know about PrEP and could have potentially been on PrEP and not stero-converted and acquired HIV. If they had, you know, an HIV positive partner, uh, someone living with HIV, they could still have a sero-discordinate couple, which means that somebody is HIV positive and another person is HIV negative. So I am, again, you know, I don't regret it. I'm still very thankful that we did it together and we did it our way.
SPEAKER_00It's hard to do this work with no funding, y'all. We put together a project of ginormous magnitude and intensity. And I think about, you know, my homegirl, shout out to Dr. Leah Reynard, who really jumped in and I was like, I got three dollars. God bless. I got three dollars and two nickels I can rub together to pay you, who's a professional editor and just was like, oh my God, this is amazing. And I want to help you get this across the finish line because it just takes a lot to do this. And we don't have a large corporation behind us, we don't have the federal government behind us, we don't have these large entities that really are sort of the arms and the machines behind a lot of projects that make it out. And I don't know that people know how much work it is to put together something, especially like this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And we are in the process of finalizing and you know, it's been submitted successfully. We are in the conversations with the publisher, and there will be more coming soon. So please stay tuned for that. And if you can do anything with any of this information that you learned to in today's episode, is that there are a lot of gems that we dropped today, and you're not in this work alone. But even if you are doing it alone, do it scared, do it unimperfect, do it just because you can, because you are a trailblazer in your own right, and you are the only you on this earth. So do the damn thing. You know what I'm saying? Like, don't be and I'm all about doing it, figuring it out, and learning as we climb, building the plane as we're flying, like, because that's what life is all about. Clean it up later. Anyway, so as we get ready to close, my question that I ask all my guests is where does public health show up in your work, even behind the scenes? So if you can think about something that is public health related, but maybe the average person doesn't know, share that.
SPEAKER_00That's such a hard question. I feel like everything that I do is public health related, right? Because I am all about how do we sort of maximize our lives to live the best possible lives that can exist for us without causing ourselves more stress. And so I would say for me, public health shows up in um how and where and when I decide to take rest. Because rest is a form of resistance, it is radical, it is especially so as a black woman who is hyper productive to be able to do. And so I think about everything I know about work, about wellness, about well-being, about stresses, and I choose my vacations and I choose them intentionally in the same way that I choose where I'm going to go to work. I choose places that can maximize, amplify, or improve my health.
SPEAKER_01I love that. I love that. And so can you tell our audience how they can find you, if they want to connect with you, collaborate, follow, support? Shout out to your socials.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. You can find me on all social platforms under at Dr. Brit Williams, so D-R-B-R-I-T, that's Brit with one T Williams, and I'm available at drbritwilliams.com. So hit me up, email me. If you also have a podcast or a web show and you want some more gems, I'm always available. If you want the dynamic duo, somebody called us. What did they call? Did they call us Selma and Louise at the last conference?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the sexy Selma and Louise. I was like, oh, that's cute. That's cute.
SPEAKER_00I like that. So if you need Selma and Louise, we are here, we are available, honey available. Trying to be booked and busy. I'm available on all social platforms, but especially on Instagram and LinkedIn.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. And you were a rock star. So thank you for being a part of a conversation on Real Talk Real Impact. So, for folks listening in, keep showing up, keep asking questions, and keep pushing for better. And until next time, we'll catch you later. Have a good one. Bye.