Never Limit Yourself - Interview with Dr. Tonya Bradford, UC Irvine

Dr. Bradford is an Associate Professor and Inclusive Excellence Term Chair Professor at the University of California Irvine's Paul Merage School of Business. Her expertise includes rituals, relationships with money, communities, and gift-giving. She has researched topics such as wedding registration, tailgating, and the one I was personally interested in, organ donation. 

Organ Donation Expressed Through Art

Dr. Bradford has written several papers on organ donation as a form of gift-giving. Her research is tied into business because of how organ donation affects funeral services. When families donate organs they are giving the “gift of life” to another. Her research paper titled “Researching Multisensory Experiences Through an Artist’s Eye” focused on putting the feelings of families donating their deceased loved ones’ organs into paintings and, eventually, words.

Dr. Bradford originally thought of using projective techniques, which is when a participant is shown an image or picture and they react to it with their true feelings. However, she and her team felt that having their participants do a projective task wasn’t quite enough. She shared with me: “We thought that it might trivialize this experience. Someone’s actually lost someone to death and then they’ve decided to give their organs to someone else so they can live. We thought that these stories were very impassioned.” Instead, she decided to hire an artist (specifically a painter) to create a two-dimensional artwork from the words the participants used to describe their feelings. “We wanted to figure out how we can actually represent these stories in a way that had the texture that words sometimes don’t have.” Eventually, the artists got so intrigued that they asked for more to paint. When Dr. Bradford and her team saw the painting she said “We were just overwhelmed. We shared the photos back with the people who shared the stories from which the art pieces were generated and from a place of not having words, most all of these people had lots of words to describe how they were feeling because they felt that they could interact with the artwork. And it allowed us to go even deeper into their expressions.” 

Her Job 

One of the reasons Dr. Bradford likes her job as a professor is that she helps other people achieve their goals. She stated: “It is really fun when you have a student who contacts you years after they finish their education and says ‘I used everything you taught me in your class’ or ‘You told me this would be a great fit and it was’. To recognize that what you’ve poured into people is valuable is very rewarding. Because I put a lot into my students, so when they come back and share that it makes me happy.”

Advice

Later, I asked what advice she would give and what she had received. She said, “The best piece of advice I’ve ever received is don’t limit yourself 'cause there are enough other people trying to limit you.” This, she’s found, has been especially true for women. “Often they’ll say ‘I don’t know if I can do that’ or ‘I don’t know if I’m able to’ whereas guys are like ‘Oh I can do that.’ There has been research study after research study that has shown if a job has 10 criteria and a guy meets one or two they apply to it. Whereas women think they have to meet those 10 and some other ones they’ve made up before they consider applying. And so that’s an excellent instance of data that shows women put limits on what they can do. Don’t let yourself talk you out of an idea. Just go ahead and make it happen.”

Closing 

As an artist, I have always been infatuated with how art has the ability to make feelings into a visual representation. Getting to hear Dr. Bradford talk about how she was able to make such an impactful study around that was really beautiful. In addition, as a female student of color, I was inspired by her words to just go for what I want and to not question myself or my abilities.