Rhianna C. Rogers
Director, RAND Center to Advance Racial Equity Policy
Researcher, Behavioral and Policy Sciences Department, RAND Corp.
Speaker: What You Need to Know About DEI & the Infrastructure Act
Rhianna C. Rogers is the inaugural director of the Center to Advance Racial Equity Policy (CAREP) and a policy researcher at the RAND Corp. Rogers is an expert on cultural and ethnic studies, intercultural competencies and diversity education, cultural mediation, and virtual exchange programmatic development and implementation. Her approach centers on participatory action research and community engagement processes. Before RAND, Rogers has held administrative appointments and taught in higher education spaces (2002–present). She was most recently an associate professor of interdisciplinary studies (history and anthropology) and the coordinator of the Global Indigenous Knowledge program at State University of New York (SUNY), Empire State College. At SUNY, Rogers held two systems appointments, one as the Ernest Boyer Presidential Fellow at the Rockefeller Institute of Government (2019–2020) and the other as a SUNY Center for Online Teaching Excellence Fellow (2014–2021). Rogers was also a Stevens Initiative Visiting Professor of Anthropology at the American University of Technology in Kaslik, Lebanon (2017–2018) and served two terms as the SUNY Empire State College Coordinator of Interdisciplinary and Multidisciplinary Studies (2017–2019 and 2014–2017). Rogers developed and codeveloped several successful DEI initiatives in her career, including SPEC/Buffalo Project, a grant-funded and award-winning action-based diversity program focused on the development of culturally inclusive programming and upskilling populations to inform solution-making efforts in college and community environments (2010–present). Rogers holds a Ph.D. in comparative area studies from Florida Atlantic University.