(Photo: Christina@wocintechchat.com/Unsplash)
The Center for Women, Gender and Global Leadership is coming to the campus of Howard University after a sizeable donation from a Howard trustee and a philanthropist.
President Wayne A. I. Frederick said the center will empower Black women to continue to take their rightful place as leaders.
The university was gifted $1M from trustee Jim Murren and philanthropist Heather Murren.
The Murrens said Black women’s leadership is important now more than ever.
“Facing a global pandemic, a severe economic downturn, and a renewed societal focus on racial injustice, the country is facing a critical inflection point,” they said. “To secure our national economy and ensure our future prosperity, we have to promote female leadership and ensure women’s equal representation across all sectors of our society.”
The focus of the center includes creating innovative and theoretically grounded research and creating a data center on issues of women and gender in the United States and the global Black diaspora.
The program will match individual students with high-impact women leaders, entrepreneurs, industry experts, policymakers, and social justice advocates for mentorship and sponsorship opportunities.
It will be led by a political science professor J. Jarpa Dawuni, Esq. She said the vision is to prepare students who are gender-conscious and grounded in Black feminist consciousness through collaboration with faculty on research, service learning and global engagement.