My goals for my summer and my Global Scholars Research!
By: Na’Riyah McKinney
Countdown to Impact: 3 Things, 2 Skills, 1 Truth
Summer is here, and honestly? I’m equal parts excited and nervous. I have been an Advocacy Intern at The Women’s Fund Miami-Dade since January but now I am stepping into the summer session, digging into something I care about deeply; how broad policies and laws have indirectly shaped the lives of Black women across different eras of American history. Before I dive in headfirst, I wanted to take a moment to get intentional. So here’s my 3, 2, 1.
3 Things I Want to Try This Summer
1. Connecting with a Black woman directly affected by the policies I’m studying. Academic research can name a disparity, but it can’t fully capture what it feels like to live inside one. This summer, I want to go beyond the data and have a real conversation with a Black woman in Miami-Dade who has personally navigated the systems my Capstone examines; whether that’s healthcare, housing, employment, or public benefits. My research is ultimately about people, not just policy, and I think grounding it in someone’s actual lived experience will push my analysis somewhere a textbook never could. It also feels like the most honest way to do this work and if I’m going to write about Black women’s lives, I want to make sure those lives are actually present in my process.
2. Conducting my first real research interview. I’ve done interviews for class projects before, but this is different. My Capstone calls for semi-structured interviews with policy staff, social workers, and researchers, people whose professional lives are spent navigating the systems that currently affect Black women in Miami-Dade. I want to practice holding a space for a conversation that is both structured and genuinely open, where the person across from me feels heard, not surveyed. That’s harder than it sounds, and I’m ready for the challenge.
3. Exploring Miami-Dade as more than a backdrop. I’m from Miami, so this isn’t foreign to me, but being embedded in it as a researcher is something new. I want to intentionally move through the city with my CBI in mind: visiting community organizations, attending public events, noticing how policy shows up (or doesn’t) in different neighborhoods today. Miami-Dade is one of the most racially and economically stratified metro areas in the country, and understanding that present-day geography is going to make my research richer.
My father and I, while I was younger, exercising together on a track in Miami. Showcasing my Miami roots.
2 Skills I’m Building This Summer
1. Policy literacy and actually reading the fine print. I know how to analyze policy in the abstract. What I’m working on this summer is the technical side: reading current legislative language closely enough to identify what’s missing, who’s unnamed, and where the loopholes live. My Capstone argument depends on demonstrating that harm can be encoded in a law that never mentions Black women at all, and that this pattern is very much alive in modern policy. To make that case well, I need to get more precise in how I read and interpret the documents shaping Black women’s lives right now. The Women’s Fund does this work daily, and I’m treating every policy brief and advocacy report I touch as a training ground.
2. Qualitative research skills, but using listening as method. In qualitative research, I am the instrument. There’s no formula that standardizes what I collect, and it all gets filtered through me. My questions, my interpretations, my blind spots. This summer I’m intentionally developing my ability to listen without leading, to sit with complexity without rushing toward conclusions, and to document what I observe with both rigor and humility. These aren’t just research skills. They’re life skills. And I expect them to follow me into every professional and academic space I occupy going forward.
1 Quote That Keeps Me Grounded
“If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.” — The Combahee River Collective, 1977
I keep coming back to this one. The Combahee River Collective wrote it almost fifty years ago, and it still cuts through everything. My research is about the ways modern policy continues to indirectly harm Black women, but underneath that argument is this deeper idea: that Black women’s liberation isn’t a niche issue. It’s a pressure test for every system we have. If you design a policy that actually works for Black women, it works for everyone. If it fails Black women, it’s a flawed policy, full stop.
That’s the animating idea behind my Capstone, and it’s what I’m carrying into this summer.
An older photo of my mother and I to reflect who I stem this research from, and to show that I am personally connected to my research.
HSF House Blogs 