As an international behavioral research scientist, Dr. Abrams conducts international research in collaboration with community-based and health service organizations and she is fiercely dedicated to sexual health promotion among women of African ancestry - with a focus on sexual and maternal health. She has secured numerous federal funding awards to support her work, including funding from NIMH, NIMHD, NHLBI, and Fogarty International Center.

Dr. Abrams has also founded 4 companies, including the Thrive Institute for Professional Development. The mission of the Thrive Institute is to offer transformative training and professional development experiences to advance productivity and well-being among researchers at research intensive institutions. In her downtime, Dr. Abrams enjoys yoga, dancing salsa, painting, and loving on her family.

Gretchen initially began her career as an Executive Assistant. Her journey in the corporate world provided her with a unique perspective on organizational dynamics, an acute attention to detail, and the skills required to manage complex projects with precision. However, it was her passion for travel and her deep-seated love for connecting with people that eventually led her to chart a new course in her career. Recognizing the potential to merge her professional expertise with her personal passions, she made a bold move to establish her own consulting business. As the Founder and CEO of Upper Echelon Consulting Group, Gretchen has seamlessly transitioned her background in executive support and project management into the realm of retreat production and coordination. In addition to being a minority business owner, Gretchen is also tremendously grounded in her faith and a true advocate for the transformative power of retreats.

Dr. Bowleg, a leading scholar of the application of intersectionality to social and behavioral science health research, is Professor of Applied Social Psychology in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the George Washington University (GW), and a Co-Director of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Core of the DC Center for AIDS Research (DC CFAR). She is also the Founder and President of the Intersectionality Training Institute (www.intersectionalitytraining.org).

Informed by intersectionality and critical race theory, her mixed methods research projects examine the effects of social-structural stressors (e.g., unemployment, incarceration, police brutality), intersectional stigma, and protective factors on the health of Black men at diverse intersections of socioeconomic status and sexuality. She has served as a principal investigator (PI) or joint PI of seven National Institutes of Health-funded projects and the WK Kellogg Foundation-funded, Intersectionality Toolkit Project. She is an associate editor at the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH)and the editor of AJPH’s Perspectives from the Social Sciences section. In May 2021, GW awarded her its Oscar and Shoshana Trachtenberg Prize for Scholarship (Research). In February 2022, Health, Education and Behavior, the journal of the Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE),awarded her the 2021 Lawrence W. Green Paper of the Year Award in honor of her article, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House”: Ten Critical Lessons for Black and Other Health Equity Researchers of Color.”