Dr. carlos hoyt- Biography

Carlos was born in the Caribbean coastal town, Puerto Limon, in Costa Rica and immigrated to the United States when he was four years old. He grew up in Dorchester, Massachusetts, an urban neighborhood of Boston. Carlos attended Boston Public Schools through sixth grade and then enrolled in METCO, a voluntary busing program that transported disadvantaged and underrepresented students from under-resourced school systems to better suburban schools. From seventh grade through high school, Carlos attended Dover-Sherborn Regional Junior and High Schools, after which he attended Wesleyan University, Boston University School of Social Work, and Simmons College, where he earned his PhD in social work.

Carlos is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker. He served as Assistant Professor of Social Work at Wheelock College in Boston, MA, where he was the key faculty designer of the Dynamics of Oppression and Privilege courses for BSW and MSW students, and he has held teaching positions at Simmons College, Lesley University, and Boston University, providing instruction in clinical skills and practice, group dynamics, multicultural assessment, and cultural competence. Before joining the Wheelock community, Carlos served as the Associate Dean of Students at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA, where he provided psychotherapy to students, and consultation, training, supervision, and support to faculty and student leaders. Carlos served as the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Advocate at the Chestnut Hill School in Chestnut Hill Massachusetts, and as the Director of Equity & Inclusion at Belmont Day School. His work with people as young as three years old through adulthood, in a variety of settings provides him with a uniquely deep and wide perspective on learning and growth across the full spectrum of human development and socio-cultural backgrounds.

Through his research and writing, Carlos interrogates master narratives and the dominant discourse on race and other identity constructs with the goal of illuminating and virtuously disrupting the racial worldview and challenging our conditioned attachments to reductive social identity categories. Carlos is adept at engaging people in exploring the non-racial worldview as an alternative and antidote to our society’s centuries-old inability to move beyond the puzzles and perils inherent in a racialized perspective on human differences. Carlos’ perspective is presented in his book, The Arc of a Bad Idea: Understanding and Transcending Race, published by Oxford University Press. 

Carlos has authored peer-reviewed articles on spirituality in social work practice and the pedagogy of the definition of racism and has presented his work and views on social identity, social bias, and social justice at numerous conferences. He has contributed posts to Oxford University Press’s blog site and Youtube videos. His approach in all forms of engagement with this challenging area of education, training, and growth combines preparing participants to interact fully, empathically, courageously, and candidly, grounding all content in state-of-the-art facts, facilitating experiential opportunities for participants to be active synthesizers versus passive receptacles, and an emphasis on praxis – the translation of cognitive growth into personal action.