Dr. Georgette Hardy DeJesus

Georgette Hardy DeJesus is Executive Director of Pre-College Programs in Undergraduate Studies at the University of Maryland. She holds a doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Argosy University and a bachelor's and master's degrees from Howard University. 

Dr. Hardy DeJesus develops and executes innovative, applied research that is grounded in community engagement.  Her specialty area of clinical psychology places emphasis on urban trauma-related stress, self-esteem correlates in adolescents and adults, and career development pathways for socio-culturally marginalized adolescents.  These constructs are synthesized in Dr. Hardy DeJesus’s current program of research exploring connections between self-esteem, African self-consciousness, gender, and age as they relate to African American adolescents' career aspirations and achievement through the use of self-narratives.  

Dr. Hardy DeJesus is active in numerous professional associations, having served as a panelist for the Presidential National Advisory Council on the Education of Disadvantaged Children, and currently serving on the President's Commission on Women's Issues, and the Diversity and Inclusion Task Force. 

Dr. Hardy DeJesus is in demand nationally and internationally for workshops and lectures on Race Matters in Teaching, Micro-Aggressions in The Classroom, The Language of Self-Esteem and Diversity, and racial inclusivity in higher education.  Through the Center for Leadership and Organizational Change, she has worked as a change consultant with top university officials and department heads tasked with critical academic decisions. She also leads her consultant agency, specializing in executive leadership coaching, staff development, and team-talent building, and has been a consultant with the Department of Education since 1986.

Among other expert contributions, Dr. Hardy DeJesus was featured in Kaplan/Newsweek's How to get into College, articulating the obstacles and successes among first-generation college-goers in the United States; and was cited by The Chronicle of Higher Education for the trailblazing initiatives within Upward Bound taken under her direction of The University of Maryland's Pre-College Programs.  Dr. Hardy DeJesus also authored the often-cited "The N-Word in Academia: The Psychology of Employing an Epithet," which appeared in Black Issues in Higher Education (March 28, 2002).