Biography

Troy Harden, PhD, LCSW. Dr. Troy Harden has over 25 years’ experience working in higher education and community settings. His on-going research interests are in racial equity, community violence, and social trauma and interventions within community and organizational settings. He recently developed and led Northeastern Illinois’ University’s Master of Social Work Program, and is now Director of the Race and Ethnic Studies Institute (RESI) at Texas A & M University. He has worked closely with Communities Partnering for Peace (CP4P), an effort to develop violence interventions for African American and Latino street outreach workers addressing violence in Chicago. As well, he is the lead researcher with the Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance’s Community-based Crime Reduction Grant in Englewood, partnering with the Englewood Public Safety Task Force, and he is a member of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Public Safety Research Advisory Committee. He has served as a leadership consultant with multiple institutions on issues of race, gender and poverty, including the City of Chicago’s Department of Family Support Services, the Latino Policy Forum, Chicago Public Schools, Fathers, Families, and Healthy Communities, the Pan African Association, the Illinois African American Coalition for Prevention, Burrell Communications and Cook County’s Project Brotherhood, a Black Men’s Health Clinic. He is also Board President of the Chicago Torture Justice Center, which provides mental health and community services for survivors of police torture by Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and others impacted by state-sponsored violence. He received an outstanding educator award from Congressman Danny K. Davis in 2017, is a graduate of Loyola University Chicago’s Master of Social Work program, and received his doctorate from DePaul University’s School of Education.