From the Ranks to the Rhetoric: Dr. Lessie Branch on Justice, service and Policy
An Unflinching Conversation on Policy and Veteran Voices with Dr. Lessie Branch, Navy Veteran and New School Alumna
She walks into the frame like a storm wrapped in elegance, head held high beneath a crown of thick, gray coils that doesn’t whisper wisdom, it shouts it. Dr. Lessie Branch is not your average public policy scholar. She’s a justice technician, a discourse alchemist, a systems hacker with a poet’s tongue. You’ll find her name stitched across stages, syllabi, and consulting rosters, but her story didn’t begin in a classroom. It began on Park Avenue in the ’90s, in the belly of a legal beast, during a pro bono case that pulled back the veil on racial terrorism in the workplace. That moment didn’t just inspire her, it rerouted her.
From the pages of Optimism At All Costs to grassroots organizing and truth-telling, Dr. Branch’s work is stitched together with one consistent thread: the refusal to accept symbolism as a substitute for structural change. She’s got the scholarship and the street sense to translate policy into praxis, and she does it all with a sharp mind and a sharper sense of purpose.
We sat down with Dr. Branch for a wide-ranging conversation on everything from racial equity to veteran advocacy, and the future of public scholarship.
What sparked your interest in public policy and racial equity? Was there a defining moment that put you on this path?
A pro bono racial discrimination case in the mid-1990s sparked my interest. Up until that time, I planned to go to law school. I was employed as a legal administrative assistant at a Park Avenue law firm. Assisting with that case—brought on behalf of minority plaintiffs facing racial terrorism in their workplace—was eye-opening. In those moments, I came to understand that if people could not afford to pay for legal representation and if law firms did not take on those kinds of cases at no cost, justice would not likely happen for those plaintiffs. Policy, which I often refer to as the close cousin of law, is more collective in nature and is the counterbalance or counterpart to the individualism of law.
You’ve worn many hats—scholar, educator, speaker, and policy consultant. How do you see these roles connecting in your work?
Each role feeds the other. These roles are deeply interconnected. My scholarship is grounded in lived individual and collective experience and policy relevance. Scholarship grounds my work in rigorous analysis. Teaching allows me to inspire, where I translate big ideas into tools to equip the next generation. Public speaking is the vehicle that broadens the conversation to those in community, narrating the through-line between data, discourse, and dignity. Finally, consulting is the conduit that facilitates the translation of ideas into action through public or community engagement.
You’ve worked at the intersection of academia and activism. What advice do you have for young scholars who want their research to influence real-world policy?
Start with the people, not the paper. Listen before you write. Seek to build coalitions. Your research should serve communities, not just journals. Be willing to translate your work across platforms: op-eds, community briefings, legislative testimony. And remember: rigor and relevance are not mutually exclusive.
There’s often a disconnect between how veterans are honored symbolically and how they’re treated systemically. What does a truly equitable veteran policy look like to you?
It looks like guaranteed housing, free and high-quality mental healthcare, expansive education benefits. It looks like targeted support for the demographics of veterans relative to their challenges and unique needs. It also means representation, and data transparency on which decisions are based. Trust and transformational relationships are also key.
Veterans return home with leadership, discipline, and a service mindset. How do you think institutions—academic or civic—can better harness these strengths in shaping policy or community development?
Stop seeing veterans as “charity cases” or worse, and start recognizing them as assets. Law enforcement is not the only career path for the Veteran. In short, suspend assumptions about veterans and not assume the veteran’s voice. Veteran advisory councils, community leadership fellowships, and direct pathways from service to public service roles are key.
In your work on socioeconomic disparities, have you seen particular challenges that disproportionately affect women veterans or LGBTQ+ veterans?
Wounded Warrior’s 2023 Women Warriors Initiative Report highlights that women veterans experience greater levels of loneliness, rejection, and isolation than their male counterparts. LGBTQI+ veterans experience physical, mental, and behavioral health disparities driven predominately by discrimination, stigma, and violence. At the root of these disparities are discourse and rhetoric; narratives that tell a story about these veterans that distort, infantilize, and dehumanize them. Distortion and dehumanization disempower these groups of veterans from coming forward. This is why the mission of Find and Serve to connect veterans to benefits they have earned by virtue of their service is so important.
How might scholars and policymakers better integrate veteran voices—especially those from historically marginalized communities—into research and policy?
By not assuming the veteran’s voice and by valuing veterans’ lived experience as expertise. Veterans should be co-authors, not just data points to be studied. Build participatory action research models. Fund community-based studies. Create fellowships and pathways that bring veterans into the academy and policymaking spaces.
As someone who earned both your MA and PhD from The New School, how would you describe your intellectual and personal evolution during that time?
Having earned two Master’s degrees in addition to my Ph.D., The New School challenged me to question everything—including myself. It pushed me beyond critique into construction—how to not just deconstruct systems, but design new ones. Personally, it gave me the confidence to claim space as both an intellectual and a practitioner.
Looking back at your time at The New School for Social Research (NSSR) and Milano, are there specific professors, peer conversations, or even protests that left a mark?
Absolutely. My forever dissertation chair, who I have dubbed “The People’s Economist,” Dr. Darrick Hamilton. I am forever grateful to him for his inclusivity and empowering stance. I remember early in my studies, being invited to be part of a group of young academics of color—even though I was just a doctoral student doing coursework at the time. Having a seat at that table, and being included in those conversations was empowering. Also Dr. Lisa Servon, who I met while studying for my MA in politics at NSSR. Dr. Servon’s policy classes demonstrated politics in action. Dr. Servon did not hesitate to provide a recommendation letter to support my application to Milano’s Public and Urban Policy doctoral program. Then there’s Dr. Terry Williams, the coolest Sociologist I know. I so enjoyed the projects in his courses because they required engaging in society to operationalize theory and concepts.
In many ways, your work continues The New School’s legacy of critical inquiry and social justice. Do you see yourself as part of its intellectual lineage—and how do you hope the school sees you?
Without question. I see myself carrying forward the legacy of critical inquiry in service of justice. It is my earnest hope that my three-time alma mater is proud of the contributions I have made and continue to make. It would be an honor to have The New School see me as a public scholar who remained true to the mission: to use ideas not just to analyze the world, but to change it.
The New School is known for challenging conventional boundaries. How did that environment impact the kind of scholar and leader you’ve become?
It quite literally gave me permission to be interdisciplinary. To bring policy, race, identity, the political, the sociological, discourse and rhetoric, and lived experience, built on an applied microeconomic foundation into the same conversation. I wasn’t just encouraged to be and to think boldly—I was expected to. That expectation shaped my voice and gave me the courage to use it.
