Little Wisdoms, Big Change – Dr. Ariel Breaux Torres, Psy.D.
Cynthia Ko on Dec 9, 2025
From how to build a cracking team, to unearthing the kernel of insight that was pivotal to a behavioural change intervention, this series from Claremont is an opportunity to hear from the brilliant minds working to bring about positive social change.
Dr. Breaux Torres is a Clinical and Forensic Psychologist in the US and UK with a passion and commitment to anti-oppression and racial justice. Dr. Breaux Torres began her career practicing within various correctional and state hospital systems, but has more recently worked with various health organisations to develop and deliver equity and anti-racism strategies. She is also a founding member of the Black Mental Health and Wellbeing Alliance, a group who has created and launched the Black Mental Health Manifesto in the UK.
Q1. What’s one thing you learnt early on in your career that has stuck with you ever since?
One thing I learned very early in my career is the importance of identifying my personal and professional values and using them as a north star and a way to continuously assess whether I’m operating in alignment. I’ve worked in really challenging environments and I had a supervisor early on tell me ‘at the end of the day you have to be the one that’s able to look at yourself in the mirror.’ This really resonated with me and is something I always remember. Ever since, I’ve made it a practice to reflect on my values and its allowed me to identify and course correct when I’m out of alignment, but also to create boundaries about what I will and won’t do and what environments I will and will not work in.
Q2. What insights sit at the heart of some of the work you are most proud of? How did you find the insight?
People have the solutions to the problems they face, sometimes your role is just being a tool they can use to arrive there. When I started my career as a psychologist I struggled with the way the field creates a hierarchy of knowledge between the psychologist and the client. That somehow I knew more and knew better than the person in front of me. This dynamic is also present in other fields and sectors, where some people are positioned as knowing more and some as knowing less, usually those of us who are already marginalised in some way. I’ve taken that insight into work I do outside of psychology and it’s become one of my core beliefs and a guiding principle of the work I do now in the health equity space. Communities have the knowledge, wisdom, and solutions to the problems they face, the issue is invalidation of that knowledge and wisdom, deprivation of resources, and lack of generative conditions.
Q3. What skills, values or attributes are needed in a team seeking to bring about positive change and why?
I think it’s really important to have shared values in a team because this helps to unify everyone in the team toward a shared ambition, even if the way of getting there looks different. This also helps to embrace a diversity of skills and attributes and allows for creativity in the route taken to get to that shared ambition. One thing I love about working in teams is being able to learn from one another, this is most effective when you have a diversity of skills and attributes in the team, I truly believe we should never stop learning and that there’s always more to learn from one another.
Q4. What is your favourite behaviour change or social good campaign from the last 12 months and why?
I’ve really been moved by the mutual aid work happening in Chicago in response to the attacks by ICE. There have been so many beautiful examples of communities supporting each other and protecting one another in whatever ways they can.
Q5. If you could change one thing about the past, present or future, what would it be?
We need more global and cross community solidarity. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Fred Hampton and the Rainbow Coalition and how threatened systems and institutions of oppression (and those propping them up) were by this multi-ethnic alliance working together to tackle racism, poverty, police brutality, and housing injustice. History has so many lessons for us, and we need to take heed.
Q6. What have you read / watched / listened to lately that you have found particularly insightful?
I recently read Angela Y Davis’ Are Prisons Not Obsolete and I found it so interesting how many of the things that were considered “history” or an impossibility in 2003 when the book was published now feels like warnings we failed to heed as we see history repeating itself in the sociopolitical climate of today.