DEBORAH PLUMMER, PhD

BOARD MEMBER

Deborah is most passionate about creating inclusive organizations and building peaceful communities by engaging others in workshops settings and through her writings. She currently serves as Chief Diversity Officer at UMass Medical School and UMass Memorial Health Care where she has primary responsibility for developing and executing a coordinated and comprehensive diversity plan that cultivates an inclusive academic health sciences center.  As a Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Quantitative Health Sciences, and the Graduate School of Nursing, she continues her research on diversity metrics and cross-racial friendships while teaching cultural competence in healthcare and strategies for reducing health disparities. She is the lead author in the design and development of the Diversity Engagement Survey (DES), a tool for measuring diversity and inclusion in organizations.

Deborah has held past roles as staff psychologist, hospital system chief diversity officer, university professor, founding director of a graduate degree program in diversity management at Cleveland State University.  In 2016, Deborah was named by Becker’s Hospital Review as one of the Top 15 Chief Diversity Officers to Know.