Leading with equity is an intentional practice that fosters change, engagement, and justice for the purposes of dismantling supremacy in all forms. As defined by the Lumina Foundation’s Equity Imperative, an equity framework is the recognition and analysis of historic, persistent factors that have created unequal systems. While we do not believe individuals set out to intentionally create inequity, we have each been socialized within a system that perpetuates inequities through its language, policies, and practices that result in our implicit and unconscious bias.
In case you missed “Leading with Equity,” log in with your UNID to view the main panel here. Breakout session recordings can be viewed above.
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Dr. Estela Bensimon
University Professor Emerita
University of Southern CaliforniaPanelist
Estela Mara Bensimon holds the honorary title of University Professor Emerita at the University of Southern California. She is the founder of the Center for Urban Education at USC. She is now leading Bensimon & Associates, a consulting firm that provides services with a focus on racial equity to colleges, universities, and philanthropic organizations. Bensimon is an elected member of the National Academy of Education and a Fellow of the American Education Research Association. She is a governor appointee to the Education Commission of the States. In 2020 she received ASHE’s Howard Bowen Award and the McGraw Prize. Her most recent book is From Equity Talk to Equity Walk: Expanding Practitioner Knowledge for Racial Justice in Higher Education, co-authored with Tia Brown McNair and Lindsey Malcom-Piqueux.
Dr. Jelani Cobb
Staff Writer, The New Yorker
Ira A. Lipman Professor of Journalism, Columbia UniversityPanelist
Dr. Jelani Cobb is Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Professor of Journalism and a long-time staff writer at The New Yorker, where his writing on race, history, justice, and politics earned him the Hillman Prize for opinion and analysis journalism. Most recently he edited The Essential Kerner Commission Report, a prescient and woefully neglected government examination of more than a dozen urban uprisings from 1964 to 1967, and co-edited The Matter of Black Lives, a collection of The New Yorker’s most ground-breaking writing on race in America. He is also the recipient of the Walter Bernstein Award from the Writer’s Guild of America for his investigative series Policing the Police, which aired on PBS Frontline. His most recent Frontline documentary, Who’s Vote Counts, explores allegations of voter disenfranchisement and fraud in the 2020 election.
Mary Ann Villarreal, PhD
Vice President for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
The University of UtahModerator
Dr. Mary Ann Villarreal is fueled by an unwavering commitment to ensure the doors to receiving a degree remain open and the table is set for everyone to participate. As the inaugural vice president for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at the University of Utah, she provides leadership and strategic oversight of diversity and inclusion initiatives across the University’s academic and health sciences campuses. This opportunity unites her extensive experience in higher education and her passion for social justice in leading the University on its journey to becoming an anti-racist community.
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Dani Baum, MACL
Recruitment Manager
The University of UtahDani has been the Recruitment Manager at the University Utah of since Spring of 2018. She serves as the recruitment subject matter expert for the human resources department. She consults on recruitment strategy with hiring departments, assists in the facilitation of executive searches, and conducts trainings for hiring managers, departments, search committees, students and other HR professionals on best hiring practices. She currently serves as the co-chair as the Human Resources EDI Committee along with serving on multiple inclusion committees across campus. Dani takes a consultative approach in advising hiring managers on best practices when it comes to sourcing exceptional talent and managing a fair and equitable search. She is particularly passionate about creating an excellent candidate experience and coaching hiring teams on how they can constantly be challenging their own bias and build a more inclusive search process.
Juliet Carlisle, Ph.D.
Associate Profesor, Department of Political Science
Associate Professor, Environmental and Sustainability Studies Program
College of Social and Behavioral Science
The University of UtahJuliet Carlisle is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Environmental and Sustainability Studies Program. Her research substantively deals with political behavior and public opinion with an emphasis on environmental politics and policy. In particular, Dr. Carlisle broadly considers public opinion and has investigated the interplay of demographic, cognitive, psychological, and contextual factors on attitudes regarding the environment, offshore oil drilling, large-scale solar development, and vaccines.
Her co-authored book, The Politics of Energy Crises (2017), published by Oxford University Press applies the theories of agenda setting and punctuated equilibrium to energy crises and explores energy policy during energy crises with specific attention on the role of public opinion, business interests and environmental activists.
Neelam Chand
Founder & CEO
Shift SLCNeelam Chand is the CEO and founder of Shift SLC, a diversity and inclusion consulting firm located in Salt Lake City, Utah. With over a decade of D&I experience, Neelam has worked with several different industries ranging from higher education to financial services and tech startups to break down systemic barriers and to design a more equitable workplace environment for historically excluded identities.
RyLee Curtis, MPP
Director, Community Engagement
University of Utah HealthRyLee Curtis is a Utah native. She graduated with a dual degree in Communications and Political Science from the University of Utah, where she also received her master’s degree in Public Policy. She worked on Medicaid policy in Utah for many years, before joining University of Utah Health as the Director of Community Engagement. In this role, she is leading the Hospital’s Healthcare Anchor Institution work, engaging with community based organizations to address Social Determinants of Health, and building partnerships across University of Utah Campus, University of Utah Health Plans, and the University’s Hospital.
Kurt Güner, Ph.D.
Adult Learner Program Coordinator
The University of UtahKurt Güner helps stopped out students return to school as the Adult Learner Program Coordinator at the University of Utah, where he recently graduated with his Ph.D. Over the past several years, he has presented workshops on inclusive teaching and on how to handle race/class/gender issues in the classroom across the state of Utah, training graduate students and faculty interested in building stronger, kinder, and more impactful classroom environments.
Tom Maloney
Professor, Department of Economics
The University of UtahTom Maloney is an economist with expertise in the areas of US economic history, demography, and labor. His research focuses mainly on issues of socioeconomic inequality, both in the long run and in the current period. He regularly teaches US economic history (for general education students, undergraduate economics majors, and doctoral students); the economics of discrimination; microeconomic theory (intermediate and master’s level); and labor economics. From 2011 to 2017, Maloney served as the chair of the Department of Economics at the University of Utah, and from 2010 to 2018, he was the Director of the Barbara L. and Norman C. Tanner Center for Human Rights. He received a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Dayton and master’s and doctoral degrees in economics from the University of Michigan, and from 1992 to 1994 he was a post-doctoral fellow in the Center for the Study of Urban Inequality.
Sonia Salari, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Family and Consumer Studies
College of Social and Behavioral Sciences
The University of UtahSonia Salari, Ph.D. is Professor in the Department of Family and Consumer Studies at the University of Utah and Fellow, Gerontology Society of America. She is a member of CSBS EDI Committee and Co-PI of Climate Survey. Her research focuses on inter-generational families, interpersonal relationships, minority aging, immigration, diversity, formal service use in health emergencies and public policy. As an advocate for victims, she is co-founder of the University of Utah Gender-Based Violence Consortium, Co-PI Office of Violence against Women Campus Prevention Grant and works closely with the Utah Domestic Violence Coalition. She recently published 2nd ed. of her book Family Violence Across the Life Course: Research, policy and prevention (2021). Dr. Salari has taught over two decades at the University of Utah and her teaching has won awards, including the Distinguished University Teaching Award.
Betty Sawyer, MPA
Co-Founder & Director
Project Success CoalitionBetty recently retired from Weber State University, where she served as the Community Engagement Coordinator in Access & Diversity, creating the WSU Men of Color and Families United Initiatives. She served as Advisor to Black Scholars United-BSU and NAACP College Chapter. Betty has been an agent for change in Utah and the city of Ogden, for over 40 years. Betty moved to Utah in 1975, after graduating from Morgan State University in Baltimore. She received her MPA from the University of Utah. Her advocacy work includes the creation of the state’s Martin Luther King Jr. Human Rights Commission while serving as Director of the Governor’s Office of Black Affairs and Utah Juneteenth Freedom & Heritage Festival. Betty is President of the Ogden NAACP and serves on the Ogden Diversity Commission, U.S. Civil Rights Commission/State Advisory Committee, Utah Board of Juvenile and Nat’l Juneteenth Foundation.
Diego Zegarra
Vice President of Equity & Impact
Park City Community FoundationDiego migrated from Peru in 2005 to attend the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah. His journey in the philanthropy sector began in 2009 when he managed education programs and directly worked with immigrant families and their children. With a focus on collaboration and community organizing, he works towards improving equitable outcomes for communities of color as well as other marginalized groups. Diego believes that through empowering folks and creating more inclusive environments, philanthropy can do more than just address the symptoms, but rather, examine the root causes and systems in place creating these disparate outcomes.