Spring 2023 Global Equity Research Workshop

Equity in Global Healthcare: Accessing Resources for Change Workshop

Wednesday, April 26, 2023 | 9:30 am - 1 pm

Milken Institute School of Public Health | The George Washington University

Workshop Photo Gallery

Equity Institute Global Research Workshop Recording


Schedule of Events

All sessions will be held in the Ground Floor Auditorium unless otherwise noted.
PLEASE NOTE: All participants must be registered online.

8 - 9:30 am | Registration
Location: Convening Center D


9:30 am | Welcome and Introductions

Welcome and Introduction Speakers

Dayna Bowen Matthew
Dayna Bowen Matthew

Dayna Bowen Matthew

Dean and Harold H. Greene Professor of Law, GW Law

Dayna Bowen Matthew, JD, PhD, is the Dean and Harold H. Greene Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School. A leader in public health and civil rights law who focuses on disparities in health, health care, and the social determinants of health, Dean Matthew joined GW Law in 2020. She also is the founder and inaugural faculty director of GW’s newly chartered Equity Institute, an interdisciplinary research hub dedicated to addressing racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic injustice. A prolific writer, Dean Matthew is the author of two bestselling books, “Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Health Care,” and the recently released “Just Health: Treating Structural Racism to Heal America,” and the coauthor of a case book on public health law, ethics, and policy.

Barbara Bass
Barbara Bass

Barbara Bass

MD, RESD '86, Vice President for Health Affairs; Dean, GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS); Chief Executive Officer, GW Medical Faculty Associates

In multiple administrative leadership roles, Bass has led the academic, clinical, and research missions and strategic direction of GW’s academic medical enterprise since January 2020.

Over the course of her career Bass led an academic practice in complex GI surgery and later endocrine and breast surgery, training of hundreds of residents and students. Her passion for education innovation led to the creation of a state of the art simulation based training and research center at the Houston Methodist Research Institute for proceduralists in practice: MITIE has to date provided retooling education to over 60,000 health care providers. Her research programs in GI cell biology and later application of  computational sciences to surgical disease and technologies have been funded by the NIH, NSF, EU and many others for over 3 decades.

A tireless advocate for opportunity and advancement of women and other groups long underrepresented in medicine, Bass has fostered the careers of many to achieve leadership and career satisfaction to create a more diverse and inclusive academic healthcare community. She has received national and international honors in recognition of her commitment to this change. 

Bass’ national leadership roles include service as President of the American College of Surgeons, the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract, and the Society of Surgical Chairs, Chair of the American Board of Surgery among others; she has served on the editorial boards of leading surgical journals and NIH study section and advisory committees. 

Bass earned her BS from Tufts University and MD from the University of Virginia. She trained in general surgery at George Washington University and completed a research fellowship at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, serving as a captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps.  Prior to GW, Bass was Professor and Chair of Surgery at Houston Methodist Hospital/Weill Cornell Medicine.  

LaQuandra Nesbitt
Laquandra Nesbitt

LaQuandra Nesbitt

MD, MPH, Senior Associate Dean for Population Health and Health Equity; Executive Director, GW SMHS Center for Population Health Sciences and Health Equity; Professor of Medicine, GW SMHS

Dr. LaQuandra S. Nesbitt is a board-certified family physician with over a decade of experience leading population health initiatives in governmental public health agencies. Dr. Nesbitt currently serves as Senior Associate Dean for Population Health Sciences and Health Equity and Bicentennial Endowed Professor of Medicine and Health Sciences at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences and is the inaugural Executive Director of the Center for Population Health Sciences and Health Equity. 

The GW SMHS Center for Population Health Sciences and Health Equity (CPHSHE) was founded in late 2022 as a premier academic center within the university for applied population health research to address health inequities. CPHSHE provides strategic direction and support to the education, research and clinical programs within the GW academic medical enterprise (GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences, GW Medical Faculty Associates, GW University Hospital, and Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center-GWH) to advance the improvement of population health through a health equity lens.

Dr. Nesbitt most recently served as the Director of the District of Columbia Department of Health in Washington, DC, from January 2015 to July 2022 where she led with a focus on health equity and improving the quality of health programs and healthcare services for all DC residents, working to address the District’s most pressing health challenges. As a physician leader, Dr. Nesbitt mobilizes organizations and communities to implement innovative solutions that promote health and wellness, and achieve health equity. Throughout her career she has led multi-sector collaborations to address innovation in healthcare delivery and its impact on high cost, high need and other special populations; the integration of public health and healthcare; and the impact of emerging infectious diseases on population health. Prior to her role in DC, Dr. Nesbitt served as the Director of the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness where she led initiatives focused on Affordable Care Act implementation and violence prevention. 

Gail Rosseau
Gail Rosseau

Gail Rosseau

MD, FAANS, FACS, Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery, GW SMHS

Dr. Rosseau is Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington, DC and Adjunct Professor of Global Neurosurgery at Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, AZ.  She is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the G4 Alliance, the major global advocacy organization for SOTA care: Surgery, Obstetrics, Trauma and Anesthesia.

Her areas of expertise include pituitary and skull base surgery, microvascular compression syndromes and stereotactic radiosurgery. Her clinical practice currently is focused on members of the military, particularly in the area of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). She is a member of Alpha Omicron Alpha and has authored over 150 peer-reviewed publications.  She is Global Champions Editor for World Neurosurgery, and Section Editor for Global Neurosurgery for Neurosurgery. Current research funding includes 2 NIH grants that are establishing TBI Registries In Zambia, and  a GW Equity Institute Initiative Grant to study surgical training in Africa. She is co-Founder of the Global Alliance for the Prevention of Spina Bifida-F(GAPSBIF), which is working with the member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) to eliminate Spina Bifida, one of the humanity’s most serious congenital defects.  She has served as an officer of the WFNS Administrative Council, and as Chairman of the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies World Health Organization Liaison Committee (WFNS-WHO). She is currently on the Executive Board of the WFNS Foundation.  She has long served on the Board of Directors of the Foundation for International Education in Neurosurgery (FIENS) and of ThinkFirst, the International Head and Spine Injury Prevention Program.  She has also been elected to leadership positions in the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) and the Société de Neurochirurgie de Langue Française (SNCLF).  She is an active member of  the Advisory Board of the National Churchill Leadership Center at GW. She is a lifetime Board Member of Interfaith America, the leading religious pluralism organization in the country. She has been Visiting Professor at over 20 universities. In 2022, she was the keynote speaker at the Neurosurgical Society of Australia and the French Association of Obstetricians and Pelvic Surgeons. In 2021, she was honored with the AANS Humanitarian Award.


Part 1: Research

9:40 am | Plenary Session 1: The Impact of Neocolonialism on Surgical Training Programs in Africa

This session will examine three key research area findings: the history of colonialism in Africa that led to the current training systems; identifying opportunities and barriers to current surgical training in Africa; and current and future challenges to surgical workforce training in Africa.

Why are we are hosting this Global Equity Workshop?

Since the first African country attained independence from colonial rule, surgical training has evolved through three models. The first is a colonial-local master student model, the second is a purely local training model, and the third is a collegiate inter-country model. The three-run concurrently and there are varied perceptions of their equivalence in training and competence. We review the historical development of training and seek to further explore the neocolonial underpinnings of how they are perceived and how these various models of training impact the positive development of surgical capacity in Africa as opposed to contributing to “brain-drain”. To date, there are no studies in the literature evaluating this systemic issue and we aim to uncover a potentially addressable source of health inequity in this region through virtual interviews, surveys, direct data collection, and in-person field research.

This session aims to conduct research that identifies the contributions of prior colonization and current neocolonialism on the training structures of surgical education in Africa, which directly impact the delivery of and access to quality and timely healthcare in the region.

Plenary Session 1 Participants

Host - Gail Rosseau
Gail Rosseau

Gail Rosseau

MD, FAANS, FACS, Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery, GW SMHS

Panelist - Andrea L. Klein

Andrea L. Klein

BS, MD/MPH, Class of 2023, GW SMHS and Milken Institute School of Public Health; Integra Global Surgery Graduate Fellow, Society for Research in Hydrocephalus and Spina Bifida

Ms. Klein is a senior MD/MPH student and the recipient of the 2022 Integra Global Surgery Graduate Fellowship. She has authored nearly 100 peer-reviewed publications, book chapters, posters, and international presentations in neurosurgical oncology and recently won the 2022 CNS Lunsford Leksell Radiosurgery Award. She and Dr. Rosseau are collaborating on several ongoing projects with local research partners which will provide contextual information regarding the history and current practice of neurosurgery in Africa.

Panelist - Abebe Bekele
Abebe Bekele

Abebe Bekele

Dean, School of Medicine, UGHE; Professor of Surgery, General and Thoracic Surgeon; Researcher, Medical Educationist, Global Surgery Advocate

Abebe Bekele, MD, FCS (ECSA), FACS, MAMSE is the Dean of the School of Medicine at the University of Global Health Equity (UGHE) in Rwanda. He is a Professor of Surgery (General and Thoracic surgery) at UGHE and has full Professor position at the Addis Ababa University and the University of Rwanda. He has served as CEO of the Tikur Anbessa (Black Lion) teaching Hospital and Dean of the School of Medicine at the Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia.

He has fellowships in Medical Education from the FAIMER in Philadelphia, and in Simulation Based Education from the University of Washington. He has vast experience in surgical education, research and academic leadership. He has also served as guest lecturer, international speaker and external examiner in both undergraduate and post graduate surgery education in Ethiopia, Africa, Europe and North America.

Professor Abebe is a member of the Governing Council and Chairman of the Examinations and Credentials Committee at the college of surgeons of East Central and Southern Africa (COSECSA) and Editor-in Chief of the East and Central Africa Journal of Surgery. He has published more than 85 articles and book chapters and is a recipient of several regional and international awards and recognitions. He also serves as member of the editorial board of the JAMA health forum and the Ethiopian Medical Journal. He is also member of the advisory council to the Ethiopian ministry of sciences and higher education.

Professor Abebe is actively engaged in Global Safe Surgery and Anesthesia Initiative and has served as a senior advisor to the Federal Ministry of Health, Ethiopia in the Saving Lives Through Safe Surgery (SaLTS) initiative. He has participated in several panels is medical education and global surgery and is passionate about equitable access to surgical care, care, gender equity in global surgery and surgical education. His research interest is around trauma care, surgical oncology, global surgery, medical education, and quality in health care.

Panelist - Beverly Cheserem
Beverly Cheserem

Beverly Cheserem

BM(Hons), FRCS (Neurosurgery), Assistant Professor and Consultant Neurosurgeon, Aga Khan University Hospital, Nairobi, Kenya

Dr. Cheserem is the Decolonization Lead in the Global Neurosurgery Committee of the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies. She has completed fellowships in Skull Base Surgery at the University Hospital of Wales and in Global Health in the Weill Cornell-Muhumbili Orthopaedic Institute Program in Tanzania.

Panelist - Muhammad Raji Mahmud
Muhammad Raji Mahmud

Muhammad Raji Mahmud

MD, FWACS, FACS, FAANS, Associate Professor/Chief Consultant Neurosurgeon, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria

Dr. Mahmud is Associate Professor and Director of Neurosurgical Training, as well as Director of Grants, Collaborations and Linkages of the Department of Surgery at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria. He is a Member of the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies Africa 100 Committee and of the Board of Directors of the Foundation of International Education in Neurosurgery, is involved in research, and has published in a number of books and journals. Dr. Mahmud is a recipient of a Commendation by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Panelist - Nqobile Thango
Nqobile Thango

Nqobile Thango

MD, Pediatric Neurosurgeon and Lecturer in Neurosurgery, Neuroscience Institute, University of Cape Town; Chair, Young African Neurosurgeons Forum

Dr. Nqobile Thango is a pediatric neurosurgeon and lecturer in neurosurgery at the University of Cape Town. In addition, Dr. Thango is a researcher at the UCT-Neuroscience institute. Her research interests include neurosurgical research education and capacity building,along with understanding how the brain responds to injury at a cellular level. Dr. Thango is Chairman of the Young African Neurosurgeons Forum, an organization which has been instrumental in conducting research and educational activities on the African continent. She is research co-lead in the WFNS Global neurosurgery committee and the WFNS Young Neurosurgeons Forum. Dr. Thango is also on the editorial board of the prestigious journal Neurosurgery (Global Neurosurgery).


10:40 am | Break


Part 2: Global Resources for Equity Research

10:45 am | Plenary Session 2: Untapped Sources of Funding for Equity Research

These sessions will consist of three plenary sessions to introduce and discuss, tips for getting research published in venues to help disseminate equity scholarship. Because the Equity Institute (EI) is committed to authentic community engagement, a plenary session will be devoted to sharing strategies and techniques for fostering meaningful partnerships with community partners and advocates.

Finally, the workshop will close with an announcement of new seed grant funding opportunities from the Equity Institute.

Plenary Session 2 Participants

Moderator - Dayna Bowen Matthew
Dayna Bowen Matthew

Dayna Bowen Matthew

Dean and Harold H. Greene Professor of Law, GW Law

Presenter - Susan Boerstling
Susan Boerstling

Susan Boerstling

Assistant Vice President, Corporate and Foundation Relations, George Washington University

Susan Boerstling spearheads foundation and corporate engagement strategy for the university. She joined GW in 2013, and has 25 years of development experience specializing in partnerships with institutional funders. Prior to joining GW, Susan was with the Communications Consortium Media Center, a strategic communications nonprofit, for 13 years in a variety of positions, including development director and chief of staff. She also served at Georgetown University in the Office of Corporate and Foundation Relations, and at the United Way of Massachusetts Bay. Susan is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Boston College with an AB in Communication.

Presenter - Adnan Hyder
Adnan Hyder

Adnan Hyder

Senior Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Global Health, Milken Institute School of Public Health, George Washington University

Dr. Adnan Hyder is Senior Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Global Health at the Milken Institute School of Public Health of George Washington University. Previously, Dr. Hyder served as the Associate Chair of the Department of International Health and Director of the Health Systems Program at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He was also previously Associate Director for Global Programs at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and founding Director of the Johns Hopkins International Injury Research Unit.

For over 20 years, Dr. Hyder has worked to improve global health in low- and middle- income countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East; and pioneered empirical work around health systems, ethics, and injury prevention in the developing world. He has conducted studies focusing on defining the epidemiological burden, understanding risk factors, exploring potential interventions, estimating economic impact, and appreciating the socio-cultural correlates of non-communicable diseases around the world. He has studied health systems constraints, biomedical ethics, participated in trainings of thousands of health professionals, defined the loss of healthy life years, and explored issues of health policy development. Dr. Hyder has co-authored over 300 scientific peer-reviewed papers and numerous world reports on road safety, child injuries, and health systems. Dr. Hyder received his MD from the Aga Khan University, Pakistan and obtained his MPH and PhD in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University, USA.


11:15 am | Plenary Session 3: Forming Authentic Community Partnerships

This plenary session will explore the essentials of community-engaged scholarship (CES). The foundation of CES is authentic community collaborations.

Plenary Session 3 Participants

Moderator - Shawneequa Callier
Shawneequa Callier

Shawneequa Callier

Associate Professor of Clinical Research and Leadership, GW School of Medicine & Health Sciences, George Washington University

Shawneequa Callier, JD, MA, is an Associate Professor with tenure in the Department of Clinical Research and Leadership at the George Washington University (GW) School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS). Professor Callier is an NIH-funded researcher with two decades of experience analyzing the ethical, legal, and social implications of genomics and emerging technologies. A significant part of her scholarship focuses on issues of ethics, law, and equity in the context of precision medicine, mobile health research, data science, and genomics. In addition, for over ten years, Professor Callier has maintained an appointment as a Special Volunteer at the Center for Research on Genomics and Global Health, the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), National Institutes of Health. In 2017, Professor Callier received a Genome Recognition of Employee Accomplishments and Talents (GREAT) Award from NHGRI for her collaborative scholarship on advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in global genomics research.

Panelist - Jameta Barlow
Jameta Barlow

Jameta Barlow

Director, Undergraduate Studies, Assistant Professor of Writing, Health Policy, and Management and WGSS, George Washington University

Jameta Nicole Barlow, PhD, MPH, RYT® 200, is a community psychologist, women’s health scholar and an assistant professor of writing in The George Washington University's University Writing and Women's Leadership Programs. With secondary appointments in the Milken Institute of Public Health’s Department of Health Policy and Management and the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences’ Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program, where she is the Director of Undergraduate Studies, Dr. Barlow uses Black Feminisms and Womanism to theorize, implement and evaluate methodologies, interventions and policies for Black girls and women, focusing on her evidence-based curriculum, "writehealing," to uncover trauma and healing. With professional experiences in federal government, national nonprofits and academia, she has spent 24 years in transdisciplinary collaborations with physicians, public health practitioners, researchers, policy administrators, activists, political appointees, and community members in diverse settings throughout the world.

Community Partner - LaDon Love
LaDon Love

LaDon Love

Executive Director, SPACEs In Action

LaDon Love is the Executive Director of SPACEs In Action/SIA. SIA is a membership-based community organization that focuses in the District of Columbia in wards 5, 7, and 8, as well as, Maryland in Montgomery County. SIA was one of the lead organizations in the campaign that secured over $75 million in the DC budget to increase wages for early learning educators and millions to support health services for DC families raising children from birth to three in 2021. As a result, this year, assistant and lead teachers received their first pay supplement of $5k to $14k. In January 2023, the DC childcare sector will have a healthcare option. In 2020, SIA coordinates mutual aid in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and, began its first GOTV campaign that included voter registration, candidate forums, and voter education. In 2021, SIA was a lead organization in the healthcare for all initiative that resulted in the DC Council passing of the Medicare for All resolution with a vote of 12:1. Both campaigns focused on shifting the narrative by training and elevating the stories of directly impacted leaders with their bold solutions for change.

LaDon has over two decades of experience in community, leadership, and organizational development. She uses grassroots organizing to engage in local, state, and national campaigns to affect public policy. She works with local leaders to identify issues and develop solutions to improve the lives of low and, moderate-income families, and their communities.

She is also a published photographer who uses her photography skills to document the work and tell the story of those directly impacted. As a result, she is able to bring their personality to the photography experience. She also captures portraits of business leaders and entrepreneurs. She is the lead trainer for Empowered Women International's Entrepreneurs Training for Success program. Through the course of the 18-session program, she guides women business owners in the process of developing their business plans and pitch.

Additionally, she is the Vice-Chair of the Algebra Project Board of Directors and a founding member of Community Voices Heard. In her 20 years of experience, she has worked with the Neighborhood Preservation Coalition of New York State, the Northwest Bronx Community Clergy Coalition, Citizen Action of New York, the Center for Community Change, the Center for Progressive Leadership, and the Community Learning Partnership. She received the Shirley Chisholm Leadership and Ms. Magazine Woman of the Year awards.

Training and Education: Hunter College, Empowered Women International, Life Asset, Aspen Institute, Rockwood Leadership Institute, Technology Of Participation and Training for Change, Washington School of Photography, and Entrepreneurial Women’s Institute

Panelist - Donald Braman
Donald Braman

Donald Braman

Associate Professor of Law, GW Law

Don is an Associate Professor at the George Washington University Law School & Director of Science and Policy at the Justice Innovation Lab.

Don teaches courses on criminal law, evidence, policing, evidence-based policymaking, data-driven criminal justice reform, and data science and law. Through the Justice Innovation Lab, he assists jurisdictions seeking to reduce inequality through criminal justice reform. 

Don is a graduate of Yale Law School and the Yale Graduate School (Anthropology), where he worked with families of prisoners and authored Doing Time on the Outside, a study of the impact of mass incarceration on families and communities in the District of Columbia.  He has written extensively about the role the criminal justice system plays in disassembling families and communities, contributing to the conditions that give rise to the social disorder that the criminal justice system purports to reduce.

Community Partner - Jarvis Idowu

Jarvis Idowu

Director, Programs and Prosecution Partnerships, Justice Innovation Lab

Jarvis Idowu is a highly experienced criminal justice reform advocate with a focus is on the development and implementation of prosecutorial reform in the United States. Jarvis served as a prosecutor at the Manhattan District Attorneys Office, as Deputy Executive Director and Director of Programming at Prosecutor Impact, and currently serves as the Director of Programs and Partnerships at Justice Innovation Lab. Jarvis is an Obama and New Leadership Counsel fellow, has served as a criminal justice policy advisor on both national and local political campaigns and his analysis and commentary have been featured in a variety of publications. Jarvis is also a product of the New York City group home and foster care system and, as a result, brings a unique and powerful perspective on what it takes to bring innovation to the field of criminal prosecution.

Community Partner - Dwight Whetstone

Dwight Whetstone

Collaborator, Justice Innovation Lab

Dwight is the Maintenance Director at York Nursing and Rehab Center in Philadelphia and a frequent lecturer at Center City Mosque and United Muslim Mosque where he leads conversations on a variety of subjects including community building and accountability. As a former juvenile lifer - having served 24 years in prison - Dwight is also passionate about reimagining our criminal justice system’s approach to dealing with harm and has volunteered his time to help prosecutors and police better understand the impact of their decisions. Dwight is a proud husband to Nafeesa and father to his 3 month old son Yunus.

Panelist - Wendy Ellis
Wendy Ellis

Wendy Ellis

Assistant Professor in Global Health, and Director, Center for Community Resilience, Milken Institute School of Public Health, George Washington University

Wendy Ellis is an Assistant Professor in Global Health and the Founding Director of the Center for Community Resilience at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. Dr. Ellis has spent the last fifteen years developing and working to grow a 'resilience movement' to address systemic inequities that contribute to social and health disparities that are often transmitted in families and communities from generation to generation.

The Building Community Resilience (BCR) collaborative and Resilience Catalysts networks are implementing Dr. Ellis’ BCR process and the Community Resilience framework she developed during her doctoral studies at The George Washington University. Ellis’ innovations provide a platform for cross- sector partners to align resources, programs and initiatives with community-based efforts to address adverse childhood experiences and adverse community environments-- or as Ellis has coined it "The Pair of ACEs". The strengths-based approach is aimed at building the infrastructure to disrupt cycles of structural racism, foster equity and promote resilience in communities by improving access to supports

and buffers that help individuals 'bounce back' and communities thrive. The BCR process and Community Resilience framework are being used in more than 20 cities and states across the country. Dr. Ellis’ Community Resilience framework is featured in a special issue of the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice focused on addressing structural racism as a public health initiative.

Leveraging her extensive background in communications, in 2022 Dr. Ellis produced a documentary, “America’s Truth: Cincinnati” that follows her team’s innovative approach to centering conversations on structural racism that galvanized a resilience movement to foster equity through systems and policy change. On the heels of that success, Dr. Ellis and her team have launched a Truth & Equity movement in Washington, DC. Dr. Ellis holds several leadership positions in public health including Chair of the National Academy of Science’s, Enhancing Community Resilience in the Gulf States Committee, Scientific Advisor to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Prevention and Injury Center and the National Academy’s Culture of Health Advisory Board. In 2018 Dr. Ellis was selected as an Aspen Institute Ascend Fellow to support her leadership in developing cross-sector strategies to address childhood trauma, foster equity and build community resilience.

Community Partner - Tiffany Williams
Tiffany Williams

Tiffany Williams

CEO, Martha's Table

Tiffany Williams, Chief Executive Officer of Martha’s Table, is a visionary advocate and community champion with more than 25 years of experience as an education and nonprofit leader. A seasoned strategist, Tiffany has spent her career working to
advance equitable and inclusive solutions for communities that have been historically underserved, and is driven by the belief that every Washingtonian deserves the opportunity to thrive. Since 2017, Williams has held multiple leadership positions at Martha’s Table, including as Chief Program Officer, where she directed and designed the organization’s expanded offerings. Previously, Williams was Director, Healthy Start Education and Assistant Head of School at the National Child Research Center (NCRC).

Panelist - Ivy Ken 

Ivy Ken

Associate Professor of Sociology, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, George Washington University

Professor Ivy Ken is Associate Professor of Sociology, Public Policy, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She studies race, class, and gender inequality, both empirically and theoretically, with a social policy bent. The quest in her scholarship is to identify the dynamics through which structural inequalities are produced and maintained. Ken's work with Prof. Kenneth Sebastian León on state-corporate harm in the meatpacking industry received seed funding from the Equity Institute in 2022. In this work, Ken and León are studying whether meatpacking companies’ state-facilitated move to rural areas constitutes a form of internal settler-colonialism in terms of land and labor. They have worked with community partners in North Carolina and Minnesota to learn about the practices of coercion, confinement, and racialization that render the industry’s workforce disposable.  Ken is a recipient of the George Washington University's Bender Teaching Award and the Robert W. Kenny Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Along with Allison Suppan Helmuth, Ken was awarded the 2022 Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Article Award from the American Sociological Association, Race, Gender, and Class Section for their article on mutual constitution in feminist intersectional studies.


Noon | Plenary Session 4: Getting Your Research Published

Participants will learn ways to connect in the field and survey publishing opportunities and prepare academic papers for publication, plan and prepare elements of an effective book proposal, and communicate effectively with editors. We will also explore equity issues in scholarly publishing.

During Dr. Zareen Zaidi’s session, participants will be guided through research findings on “Interrupting Coloniality: Generating Scholarship Organically.” Specifically, participants will walk away with a greater understanding of how to: describe the impact of colonialism and the need to decolonize health professions medical education (HPE) research; examine the leaky pipeline of publications in HPE research; identify if there are alternate canons of knowledge that have been marginalized or dismissed because of colonialism; and specify steps minoritized faculty can take to increase their scholarship contribution.

Plenary Session 4 Participants

Moderator - Wendy Wagner
Wendy Wagner

Wendy Wagner

Program Manager, Community-Engaged Scholarship, Honey W. Nashman Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service, George Washington University

Dr. Wendy Wagner is the Director of Community Engaged Scholarship at the Honey W. Nashman Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service. She supports campus-community partnerships that engage faculty and students with community organizations in mutually beneficial initiatives. Her goal is for community engagement to be a hallmark of the GW experience across all disciplines, with local community leaders determining the aims and co-creating the initiatives. Wendy’s scholarly background is in college student learning and development, particularly facilitating leadership development through community-engagement experiences. She is best known for her work on student development of socially responsible leadership competencies and values.

Presenter - John W. Warren
John Warren

John W. Warren

Director, MPS in Publishing Program

John W. Warren is director and associate professor in the Master of Professional Studies in Publishing program at the George Washington University. He formerly held the positions of director, George Mason University Press; marketing and sales director, Georgetown University Press; director of Marketing, Publications, RAND Corporation; and marketing manager at Sage Publications and Fondo de Cultura Económica. He has a master’s degree in international management from the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego. He is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, a frequent speaker at international publishing conferences, and the author of several articles about the evolution of eBooks. He authored the Impact module, an open textbook for the Library Publishing Curriculum. He is a classical guitarist and composer as well as a regular contributor to Classical Guitar and Acoustic Guitar magazines.

Presenter - Zareen Zaidi
Zareen Zaidi

Zareen Zaidi

MD, Professor of Medicine, GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences, George Washington University

Dr. Zareen Zaidi MD PhD is Professor of Medicine at the George Washington School of Medicine. She practices general internal medicine and has a PhD in Medical Education from Maastricht University. Dr. Zaidi has received both regional and national educational grants and has published her work in all top peer-reviewed journals in the field of Medical Education, including Academic Medicine, Medical Education, Advances in Health Sciences Education, Teaching and Learning in Medicine and Perspectives on Medical Education. She serves on the editorial board of Teaching and Learning in Medicine and Perspectives on Medical Education. Her research focuses on issues related to power, race and social justice. She has been invited nationally and internationally to speak about diversity, equity and inclusion in medical education and the health professions.


12:45 pm | Closing Session: New Seed Grant Opportunity Announcement

Dayna Bowen Matthew, GW Law