Tony West Jr.: A Pioneer Using Empathy as a Superpower

Working as a school psychologist can be an enormous challenge on its own. But, thriving in the field as a “double minority,” Tony West Jr., Ed.S. ’11, explained, has its own set of circumstances.

“There aren’t many Black men working as school psychologists,” said West, who serves as one of three lead psychologists in Gwinnett County Public Schools, one of the largest school districts in Georgia.

“A lot of times, people aren’t expecting a Black man to be sitting at the table. I don’t look like the last school psychologist,” West said, explaining the initial difficulties that are sometimes present when meeting with parents. “But I also feel like it’s my superpower because it helps me to understand people’s perspectives. I can maybe understand the struggles that they’re going through.”

Every day, West works directly with students, teachers and families, assessing students for potential disabilities, collaborating with educators and guiding parents through the complexities of their children’s educational journeys.

West has been working as a school psychologist for more than 11 years. He attributes his success, and the wealth of knowledge he passes on to children and their families and teachers daily, to the education he received in the “excellent” school psychology program at Radford.

“It nurtured me,” said West, whose legacy at Radford stretches back to his parents meeting as students on campus in the late 1970s. “The professors we had in the program were actually practitioners as well, and so they understood what it was like to work in schools.”

The Radford school psychology faculty, West continued, “were very supportive of my vision for my career. They prepared all of us in the program with the skills we needed and allowed us to be who we were. That is something I really appreciated about Radford.”

Now, a little more than a decade from earning his Ed.S. from Radford, West is engaging his superpowers to bring out the best in young school children.