In the best of situations, parenting is hard.
When you add in any combination of challenges, from parenting children with special needs to parenting through poverty, or struggling against racial bias, or operating as a single parent, it can be overwhelming.
Pitt Social Work Associate Professor James “Jay” Huguley’s academic career has been dedicated to exploring and validating optimal parenting practices for African American families, as well as developing school-based interventions and policies that can improve educational and mental health outcomes for Black youth.
When a curriculum he designed under the name Parenting While Black achieved remarkable results in pre- and post-administration surveys in a 2021 pilot with local agencies, Huguley turned his thoughts to how to scale up the intervention.
Today, he is the CEO of Parent Heart, a startup he launched to make a real-world impact with his research. For the 2025-26 academic year, he has taken a partial leave from his academic duties to pursue funding for the company and expand its online resources, while continuing to develop curricula for broader audiences.
For his dedication to achieving societal benefit through commercial translation, Huguley and Parent Heart have been selected as the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s Startup of the Year for 2025. Read more.