Executive Director's Message

As we move into this next phase of the Center for Women, Gender & Global Leadership’s work, I feel a renewed sense of energy and direction. The Center has entered a period of growth, and this moment calls for focus, creativity, and a clear commitment to the Howard University community and beyond.

Our mandate is ambitious, but it is also necessary. The Center was created to support rigorous research and thought leadership that meaningfully shapes the lives of women and girls across the world. That mission has not changed—but the world around us has. The women of Howard University have a strong tradition of remaining unwavering in our pursuit of justice and fairness, all while leading with integrity and care. We will step into this moment with the same intention and forward vision as the leaders who came before us.

During my tenure as director, I will continue the powerful legacy of our founding director Professor J. Jarpa Dawuni and expand the Center’s focus across four interconnecting areas. First, we are amplifying faculty and graduate student research that pushes boundaries, interrogates power, and builds new knowledge across disciplines. Our goal is to elevate the intellectual labor happening at Howard and give it the visibility, infrastructure, and global reach it deserves. That means strengthening our working paper series, supporting publication pipelines, and continue cultivating interdisciplinary networks that place our scholars at the center, not the margins, of global conversations on women and gender.

Second, we are expanding our approach to thought leadership. The Center provides a platform where ideas move beyond the page. We will continue to host conversations that challenge conventional thinking, develop fresh ideas across disciplines, and bring together voices across the African diaspora and global South. We will push debates on gender, justice, and global leadership forward, not simply participate in them.

Third, we are building leadership development pathways for our students. Howard students are already driving change; our job is to prepare them for a world transformed by technology, geopolitical shifts, and new forms of inequality. We are investing in programs that build technical fluency, ethical reasoning, collective problem-solving, and the confidence to intervene in spaces that have long excluded women, especially Black women. We are also incorporating practices that support healing, recognizing that effective leadership requires strategies that protect health, boundaries, and long-term sustainability.

And finally, we are strengthening global solidarity. Whether the issue is health, climate, technology, economic insecurity, or political representation, women around the world face interconnected and compounding challenges. The Center will deepen partnerships that link our work with global movements, feminist organizations, and institutions committed to equity and justice.

One area of particular interest to me, which cuts across all four domains mentioned above, stands at the intersection of gender, labor, and technology. The stakes for women—access, safety, economic opportunity or exclusion, representation, governance—are high. Technology, artificial intelligence in particular,  is reshaping labor, politics, culture, and identity. The Center intends to be a leader in shaping the discussions of how Black women engage and transform digital worlds. 

This is a moment of possibility. I’m excited because I know that with the support of our community, the Center will grow in this next chapter. With faculty expertise, student brilliance, community and donor support, and our collective commitment, our Center continues to stand as a model of what women-centered, globally engaged scholarship and leadership can look like.

Warm regards,
Anita Plummer, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Center for Women, Gender & Global Leadership
Associate Professor, African Studies
Howard University