DEENA HAYES-GREENE
Deena Hayes-Greene is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of the Racial Equity Institute (REI), an alliance of trainers, organizers, and institutional leaders who work to create racial equity within society. Alongside her role as Managing Director, Deena serves as a Master Trainer for REI. She has worked for over 18 years as a trainer and consultant. Deena’s work focuses on the structure and impacts of race and racism within systems, institutions, and organizations. She has presented keynote speeches, workshops, and seminars across the nation to organizations interested in addressing and eliminating racial and ethnic inequities. She has served as a Human Relations Commissioner for the City of Greensboro and is presently the Chair for the International Civil Rights Center and Museum Board of Directors. Deena was elected for five terms to the Guilford County School Board, where she is the current Chair of the Board. In her work with the GCS School Board, she has chaired the Achievement Gap Committee, the Historically Underutilized Business (HUB) Advisory Committee, and the School Safety/Gang Education Committee. Deena is also an active member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) Committee for the Science of Unconscious Bias. In September 2019, Deena was honored at the Council of Urban Boards of Education meeting and named the Benjamin E. Mays Lifetime Achievement Award Winner. Deena currently serves as a member of the Disproportionate Minority Contact (RED) (Subcommittee) of the North Carolina State Advisory Group on Juvenile Justice (SAG). In 2020, Mrs. Hayes-Greene testified to the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice. The Commission was established by the former President, Mr. Donald Trump to “better the profession of law enforcement.”
VIJAYA K. HOGAN, DrPH
Dr. Hogan is a nationally known perinatal epidemiologist. She was a member of the DHHS Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Infant Mortality (SACIM) , has served as a Program Officer at the WK Kellogg Foundation, was Professor in the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the Gillings School of Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill, and was the lead epidemiologist on the Preterm Delivery Research Group at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In her career, she has worked at the community, state, and federal levels, in public and private sector, in academia, and has worked both domestically and globally. She conducted research and authored several papers relating to understanding and addressing health inequities in perinatal outcomes. She currently works as an Independent Consultant. She is utilizing her expertise to build the capacity of MCH and other public health organizations in their implementation of strategies to effectively address social determinants of health and to attain health equity.
CAMARA PHYLLIS JONES, MD, MPH, PhD
Dr. Jones, MD, MPH, PhD is a family physician, epidemiologist, and Past President of the American Public Health Association whose work focuses on naming, measuring, and addressing the impacts of racism on the health and well-being of our nation and the world.
Dr. Jones is currently a Presidential Visiting Fellow at the Yale School of Medicine in the Department of Medicine and the Office of Health Equity Research; will serve as the 2021-2022 UCSF Presidential Chair at the University of California San Francisco; and was the 2019-2020 Evelyn Green Davis Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.
She taught six years as an Assistant Professor at the Harvard School of Public Health (1994 to 2000), served fourteen years as a Medical Officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2000 to 2014), and is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Morehouse School of Medicine and an Adjunct Professor at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University.
Dr. Jones’ allegories on "race" and racism illuminate topics that are otherwise difficult for many Americans to understand or discuss. Recognizing that racism saps the strength of the whole society through the waste of human resources, she aims to mobilize and engage all Americans in a National Campaign Against Racism.
DIANE ROWLEY, MD, MPH
Dr. Diane L. Rowley is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Maternal and Child Health, Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a medical epidemiologist whose research focuses on disparities and inequities in pregnancy and infant health outcomes. Dr. Rowley has a broad range of expertise in maternal and child health, publications on pregnancy and infant health, a track record of funded community-based participatory research, and experience in program evaluation. Before coming to UNC from 2001 to 2008 she directed a Research Center on Health Disparities at Morehouse College. And before that she was the Associate Director for Science of the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. Rowley received her medical degree from Meharry Medical College and a Masters of Public Health degree from the Harvard School of Public Health. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, a Diplomat of the American Board of Preventive Medicine, and a Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology.
MONICA WALKER, MRP
Monica Walker is a Senior Leader with the Racial Equity Institute having officially joined the team in January of 2018. Prior to that, Monica spent 12 years serving as the Executive Director of the Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion with Guilford County Schools, a position she retired from in December, 2017. She has been engaged in the work of addressing structural and institutional racism across her career spanning nearly three decades. She has worked with non-profit civil rights based organizations like the New City Urban League, the General Board of Global Ministries of UMC, and other institutions including Guilford College in Greensboro, NC. She serves and has served on several boards in NC and is an ordained Minister of Social Justice.
Monica credits her earliest exposure to this work to the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond,(NOLA), the mother organization to so many institutions. She acknowledges that it was their original analysis that shifted her whole life personally and professionally and secured her investment in this work.
Monica completed her studies in Broadcast Journalism at University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa) and a Master of Regional Planning (MRP) from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst).
Monica is focused and committed to helping communities and institutions work towards racial equity, particularly as it creates a better future for her three grandchildren, Ja”Elle,13, Neema, 6, and Kanu, 3.
