Kia Sayers

I grew up in the small town of Haughton, LA hunting for honeysuckles, making forts, and being homeschooled until high school with my 5 younger siblings. I’m also biracial (black and white), and it is a vital piece of my identity. Navigating prejudice and privilege simultaneously has significantly shaped my life thus far. While attending college at the University of Louisiana Monroe, I pursued a major in biology with a chemistry minor and found my passion for education while teaching university classes. I graduated summa cum laude and moved to New Orleans to attend Louisiana State University School of Medicine. During medical school, I spent my time in Aesculapian society, serving as my class coordinator for curriculum development, and on a step-stool in the anatomy lab as a TA. I also married my husband, now of 4 years, and together we raise our fur babies. In collaboration with the health department in New Orleans, I completed a project focusing on strangulation in domestic abuse victims and offender recurrence, and I spent my weekends at the student-run homeless clinics in New Orleans where I served on the executive board. By graduation of medical school, I was inducted into Alpha Omega Alpha honor society and received the George Sam Bel Memorial award from faculty and my classmates for an excellent academic record and representing the “highest ideals of medicine.” I was definitely a late bloomer into psychiatry but, once I experienced it, nothing else made sense. Having a family history of mental illness and finding writing about mental health as an outlet for myself, the collision of my personal and professional interests made my decision to psychiatry effortless. My specific career interests are child and adolescent psychiatry and the complexity of identity in adolescence, educating white parents of black/biracial kids, psychotherapy, nutritional psychiatry, and physical wellness. My hobbies include collecting houseplants, writing, gardening, hiking, brunching on French toast, winning at board games, and bingeing my favorite movie series (Jurassic Park and HP).