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Kyomi Gregory-Martin, PhD is a celebrated associate professor for the Communication Sciences and Disorders program at ������� and a multi-award-winning leader in the speech pathology field.

Most recently at �������, Dr. Gregory-Martin received the 2024 College of Health Professions Dean’s Award for Outstanding Scholarship and Research. This past December, she received the (ASHA) Certificate of Recognition for Special Contributions in Multicultural Affairs for excellence in multicultural service, research, and teaching. We connected with her to discuss this award and the importance of making a commitment to diversity in one's professional career.

Why is advocating and making diversity a commitment important?

It's important because it impacts everybody. Everyone has a culture. I feel like it's important for us to commit to providing the best service and quality possible for whatever culture that we encounter.

How does your passion for multicultural advocacy impact your work?

I'm passionate about it. I'm passionate about everyone working with each other regardless of their cultural background and the identities that they carry. It definitely carries over into the work that I do as a speech-language pathologist and as a professor. I want my students to be prepared for a diverse world where they're likely to work with people who are not exactly the same as them and to be able to provide effective, culturally responsive care, regardless of who the person is.

That can mean that even if someone shares the same neighborhood as someone, or the same race as someone, it doesn't mean that they're exactly the same because they haven't been raised with the same beliefs and ideas as you. You always must expect and recognize that you're going to have to respond to someone differently based on their perspective and how they grew up.

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How does it feel to be recognized as a leader in multicultural affairs in your field by the American Speech-Language Hearing Association (ASHA)?

It's really special and gratifying for me. I've been doing this work for a long time, even before I got my PhD. I worked in Louisiana - just about being able to have dialogue with others around race – and helping work with the police department in Baton Rouge to have conversations with high school students or teens about how to have effective communication. And that work has spilled over into the work I do in speech language pathology in terms of being able to provide care for others.

Getting the award (ASHA’s Certificate of Recognition for Special Contributions in Multicultural Affairs) has been over a decade of work that I've been doing not only in research, but in teaching and in service. I did a lot of service work for the National Black Association for Speech Language Hearing, including helping to launch their cultural humility task force and now they do a fully online Cultural Humility Conference as well as the Cultural Humility Ambassadors Program. And while I no longer am in leadership with that organization, I was really excited about leading some of those initiatives that are still happening.

How does joining a professional organization like ASHA help further your career as a speech language pathologist?

I think it's so important to get visibility and being a part of these national organizations because you have an opportunity to talk to others who are in other parts of the country and world, that are part of the same work that you're doing, sharing experiences, making changes – and these may even be changes to like policy documents in your profession - and being able to collaborate on those things.

We can't operate in a silo. Working in a silo is only going to impact the piece of the world that you're connected to in that direct space. We have to continue to try to do things where we build webs, and that's how you're going to make change. Creating these webs and working with others who are in other places doing similar work as you and also learning from them.

How do you navigate interprofessional partnerships where you might have one goal, but your colleague has another?

Well, there's a lot of interprofessional practice that takes place as a speech language pathologist. And that's something I really speak a lot about to my students. The fact that you're going to be working with other professionals who have different ideas about how to approach the same client, but the goal is to provide the most effective care. And part of it is one of the pillars of cultural humility, which is this idea of moving towards egolessness.

I always think, if all of us could leave our ego at the door, we would provide better care where it's not just about saying, “well, I think this is what has to be done because of my training”, but more so saying, “okay, this is the perspective I'm coming from. Let me hear what those other professionals think, and let's come to the best decision for our client.”

In terms of providing care that's collaborative care; I think that that's an important way to look at it. So even though people might think, interprofessional practice doesn't really have anything to do with cultural humility, it does because you need to have humility to work with others to really further the process of your clientele and make it not about you.

What are some key takeaways you have learned in your career that you want to share with the PACE community?

Cultural humility is an ongoing process. Working with others is an ongoing process. You're not going to just wake up one day and be able to know what to do with everybody. Throughout your career, you're always going to encounter situations where you work with someone, or you're not sure of how to respond to them or to approach them.

I'm thinking about an encounter that I had when I was a clinical fellow working at a skilled nursing facility, and I had to do a swallowing evaluation for a patient who was Jewish. And I went in with the intention to carry out this evaluation as usual. I reviewed their medical records and walked in the same way I walk in with any client. And as I was about to start, the family was there and said, “you can't do this evaluation. The food isn’t kosher.”

And it may seem like something that you take for granted or that you think is small, but religious beliefs of someone in preparation of food was not something I had thought of before.

That was a definite pause for me. I had to go and speak to the dietician for the skilled nursing facility and then go speak to the kitchen because we didn't have a kosher kitchen. We implemented training for the kitchen staff to know how to prepare kosher meals and we had to research and find companies that prepared kosher food that had certain swallowing consistencies so that the nursing home could order those meals for that individual so that they could be able to assume their dietary needs.

That is just one example of being culturally responsive. I think people's definition of culture sometimes is very focused on one thing when it goes beyond that. It's all the elements that make you who you are.

What advice would you give students who are wanting to make a difference in their field but maybe nervous to take the necessary steps for change?

Well, I think especially during these times, we're moving into having to be brave in our spaces. And sometimes looking for equitable care and equitable opportunities for all may not just be speaking out when you see something that's not okay, or something that's not fair for both you and your clients.

I think this is such an important time for us to be able to know how and when to challenge the system and make changes. It's going to feel scary and you're going to feel like you don't you don't want to do it, or that you're scared to do it. But you have to always think about who is going to benefit from you saying something.

Anything else you’d like to share?

I just believe that this work is so important. I think even more so now considering how we're providing care to our clients and how we're communicating this information to our students. As we're becoming a more diverse and global world where, we have to have the perspective that there are going to be others who have opinions that differ from our own.

But how do we move forward in providing care and still working with others interprofessionally? That’s the key.