Yakob Lemma

Yakob Lemma is a Ph.D. student in the K-12 Leadership department within the Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research focuses on Black male mental health, racial disparities in school discipline, and the school-to-prison pipeline. Yakob is especially interested in the intersection between mental health and punitive discipline, and how educational leaders, school counselors, and community-based organizations can collaborate to create more restorative and equitable school environments. He recently earned his B.A. in Psychology and Human Development and Family Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he completed an honors thesis exploring how school counselors and administrators perceive and respond to student behavior, with a focus on how mental health is (or isn’t) considered in disciplinary decisions affecting Black male students.