Dr. Banks takes a lifespan approach to understanding and preventing substance use among people minoritized due to race, intersecting identities, and unequal socioeconomic systems. Her approach considers individual and community-based strategies for improving behavioral health and mitigating the consequences of substance use from adolescent initiation to adult addiction and overdose. She also works in and with communities who have been excluded from traditional research and healthcare systems, partnering with people with lived experience to improve the quality and impact of work focused on minoritized and marginalized people.

Dr. Banks originally hails from Los Angeles but has lived in 8 cities and is finally starting to accept the Midwest after living in the region for almost 10 years. She received her PhD in clinical psychology from Purdue University in Indianapolis (previously, IUPUI), where her training was supported by a National Research Service Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). She also received her MS from Purdue and her BA from the University of California, Berkeley (Go Bears!). She misses home but loves St. Louis and is grateful to her native colleagues, students, partners and friends who have embraced this west coast transplant.