Kala J. Melchiori is currently Associate Professor of Psychology at James Madison University. She grew up in rural West Virginia and completed a BA at Marshall University and a PhD in Social Psychology at Loyola University Chicago. Broadly, her work focuses on understanding prejudice from both the target’s and perpetrator’s perspective. Most recently, her research looks at how to encourage, frame, and understand confrontations of bias in intergroup interactions. Dr. Melchiori joined SPSSI as an undergraduate in 2008 and has since served as the Graduate Student Committee Chair (2012-2013), on the editorial board of the Journal of Social Issues (2013-2016), as the 2018 SPSSI at APA Convention co-chair, as the SPSSI 2022 Conference Co-chair, and as SPSSI's The Forward Editor beginning in 2023.