Dr. Steele received her B.A. in psychology (1995) as well as her B.Ed. (1996) from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. From there she moved to Boston, Massachusetts where she attended Harvard University's School of Education. She completed a M.Ed. in 1997 and proceeded into the doctoral program in Social Psychology. Dr. Steele completed her M.A. (1999) and her Ph.D. (2003) in Social Psychology through the Graduate School of Arts and Science at Harvard University. After completing a SSHRC post-doctoral position at the University of Waterloo she accepted an assistant professorship at York University in Toronto. Dr. Steele is currently an Associate Professor of Psychology through the Faculty of Health at York.

Dr. Steele's research takes a social cognitive approach to understanding stereotyping, prejudice, and interpersonal expectancies. One main goal of the research that is currently being pursued in the IPSC lab is to increase our understand of implicit racial biases and gender stereotyping in childhood. We are particularly interested in understanding the malleability of children's implicit biases as well as the developmental course and consequences of biases among minority and majority children (with graduate students Corey Lipman and Amanda Williams). In additional research being conducted in the IPSC lab, we aim to better understand the nature of implicit racial biases among Black adults (with graduate student Allison Bair), contextual variability in implicit racial biases among adults (with Fulbright student Maggie Cease), and ways to improve interracial interactions (with Yumi Sakamoto). We have also been pursuing research that aims to identify cross-cultural differences in face recognition biases (with graduate student Andy Ng).