Emily is a Ph.D. candidate in Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin – Madison with graduate minors in Sociology and Qualitative Research Methods in Education. Prior to pursuing her Ph.D., she was an elementary school educator, first as a second-grade bilingual teacher in Brooklyn and then as a fourth-grade teacher in Ithaca, New York. As a teacher, she participated in school and community groups engaged in antiracist activism and racial equity work. Informed by these experiences, Emily seeks to understand how white education stakeholders challenge and/or (re)produce racial inequities in K-12 schooling. Emily’s dissertation research, which is supported by the Michael W. Apple Fellowship, is a qualitative case study of school and community conversations about equity and inclusion in a predominantly white, small town. The project explores how tensions between different understandings of race shape equity and inclusion policies and practices in the school district.