Building an Inclusive Democracy
Dr. Ande Diaz is an educator with 20 years of expertise in higher education who gets up every morning to help build an inclusive democracy.
Diaz is the associate provost for diversity & organizational development at Allegheny College, a private liberal arts college known for its rigorous academic programs in Northwestern Pennsylvania. She’s passionate about advancing diversity, inclusion, and civic engagement in higher education and in society.
On campus, she’s known as a collaborative leader and bridge builder. Her colleagues say she leads by example to envision, inspire, and implement concrete institutional transformation. Her work includes providing strategic direction for faculty and staff development around issues of diversity and inclusion. She believes that dialogue across differences is one of the proven strategies that can change the world.
Her colleagues say she’s as equally at home when challenging institutional trustees as she is mentoring student activists. From coaching colleagues on gender identity to teaching students about implicit bias, to directing programs on religious diversity, Diaz brings her knowledge and passion to help people engage and learn across differences. She holds the creative tensions around issues of social inequities, freedom of speech, intellectual risk and emotional safety so communities can engage in difficult dialogues across differences.
Diaz lives by the words “walk with beauty,” a Navajo saying meaning there is beauty everywhere. “This saying reminds us to notice how we spend our most precious currency of all – our attention,” she said.
Diaz holds a B.A. from Yale University, an Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Ph.D. in Human and Organizational Development from Fielding Graduate University.
Her experience across the higher education sector includes longitudinal research consultant at Tufts University; media, arts and public service career advisor at Harvard College; assistant dean for multicultural affairs and interim director of the Pace Center for Community Service at Princeton University; and associate dean and director of the Intercultural Center at Roger Williams University. Diaz identifies as tri-racial and bi-cultural with Puerto Rican and Scotch heritage. Not surprising, some of her extensive research areas include inter-ethnic alliances and intergroup dialogue.
