Deputy Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs and Equity
Nefertiti A. Walker serves as the Deputy Vice President for Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, and Equity. In this role, she works with the Senior Vice President to ensure the quality of the faculty, academic programs, students, student services, research, and public service with an emphasis on equity and access. In addition, she works to ensure the University’s education remains accessible to all people. She currently serves on the Advisory Council to Advance Representation in Education, a Healey-Driscoll administration council that reports to the governor’s executive team.
As the former Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion at the UMass Amherst campus, she worked in partnership with campus leadership, including students, faculty, administration, and staff, to build a culture of equity and inclusion. She created the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Conference, launched a successful campus climate survey, inclusive of a campuswide engagement plan, launched employee resource groups (ERGs), and created a host of new grants, programs, and advisory councils. An organizational development and design leader, she developed and executed a matrixed approach to equity and inclusion leadership.
Prior to joining the UMass Amherst central administration, Walker served as associate dean for an inclusive organization in the university’s Isenberg School of Management. In this role she established the business school’s first office of equity and inclusion.
She is a tenured Professor at Isenberg, teaching courses in leadership and organizational behavior, sport organizational development, and diversity, equity, and inclusion in business. Her research examines organizational inclusion and exclusion, seeking to understand the experiences of people with marginalized identities, and using those insights to design more inclusive organizational cultures. Her work includes over 100 international publications and presentations, and she has been published in top journals such as the Journal of Sport Management and the Journal of Business Research. In addition, she does public writing, which has been published in the Washington Post, and her work is cited widely in outlets such as espn.com, espnW.com, TIME Sports, and other news outlets.
She is a research fellow with the North American Society for Sport Management and has been awarded the Isenberg School of Management Teaching Excellence Award and the Isenberg School of Management Research Excellence Award.
Walker earned her Ph.D. from the University of Florida. She received her bachelor’s and master’s (MBA) degrees from Stetson University, where she was a NCAA Division I basketball player. She also lettered in basketball at Georgia Tech. She has been inducted into the athletics hall of fame at Stetson University and Woodward Academy.