Our Founder
Community Psychologist, Speaker, Author, Professor, Sexual Activist
Dr. Hareder McDowell is a dedicated and passionate women who has researched, worked and served communities, corporations and educational arena’s to ensure that African-American female sexual empowerment and education remains at the forefront of all industries to ensure sexual equality, health and safety.
Hareder serves as an adjunct professor of DePaul University Chicago, public speaker and civil servant within the Chicago land area. Her non-profit organization P.R.E.T.T.Y. INC. continues to serve as the only partner of Chicago Public Schools, whose baseline curriculum is specific to sexuality and sexual communication among girls and women of color. Her critically acclaimed book , “Black Women,Sex & The Lies Our Mother’s Told Us:, continues to serve as a supplemental text for various classes, topics of several book clubs and women’s health symposiums. With her passion for body positivity, sexual openness and truth, she advocates for all body types and identities. Her most recent workshop for the Society of Community Research Action, “White Supremacies effects on Black Sex, received critical acclaim & remains in place for publication.
With the intense sexual harassment climate in the United States and abroad Dr. McDowell continues to serve as a consultant, speaker and counselor to ensure that corporations, small businesses, organizations and outreach companies alike ;are aware of what sexual harassment, looks and sounds like; to begin to change the culture that has led to many of the misfortunes in the workplace and beyond. Dr. McDowell believes that sexual freedom, and sexual communication in all families and communities serve as a preventative method to many of the ill’s, abuses, mental and physical diseases affecting many of us. Dr. McDowell was honored as one of the most distinguished women in Illinois by the Orrignton Institute and her nonprofit, P.R.E.T.T.Y INC. was just honored as a grantee of the Springboard foundation. Dr. McDowell is currently on a research endeavor with Stanford University with efforts to collect data from Black women specifically to their challenges with nudity as it correlate with their medical appointments, specifically Breast Cancer. She continues to serve as a panelist, key note, workshop facilitator for various arenas including Mills University, Oakland California, Roosevelt University; Chicago, the National Pan-Hellenic council, the City College of Chicago and many female empowerment organizations alike.