A Quartet of Women Scholars Who Have Been Appointed to Endowed Professorships

Victoria O’Keefe has been named the first holder of the Santosham Chair in Native American Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. A member of the Cherokee and Seminole Nations of Oklahoma, Dr. O’Keefe was appointed an assistant professor in the department of international health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2016, becoming Johns Hopkins University’s first-ever tenure track faculty member of Native American heritage. Her research is focused on suicide prevention.

Dr. O’Keefe is a graduate of John Carroll Univerity in University Heights, Ohio. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Oklahoma State University.

Carol Gregorio, co-director of Sarver Heart Center and head of the department of cellular and molecular medicine at the University of Arizona, is the inaugural holder of the Czarina M. and Humberto S. Lopez Endowed Chair for Excellence in Cardiovascular Research.

A native of New York, Dr. Gregorio obtained her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University at Buffalo. She holds a Ph.D. from Roswell Park Cancer Institute in New York.

Katharine Hayhoe, a professor of political science and director of the Climate Center at Texas Tech University, has been named to a Horn Professorship. Her research focuses on developing and applying high-resolution climate projections to evaluate the future impacts of climate change on human society and the natural environment.

Dr. Hayhoe earned a bachelor’s degree in physics and astronomy from the University of Toronto. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in atmospheric science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Ana Ramos-Zayas, a professor of American studies and anthropology at Yale University, was appointed the Frederick Clifford Ford Professor of Ethnicity, Race, and Migration at the university. Her most recent book, Parenting Empires: Whiteness, Class, and the Moral Economy of Privilege in Latin America (Duke University Press, 2020), examines the parenting practices of Brazilian and Puerto Rican upper-class families.

Dr. Ramos-Zayas received a bachelor’s degree in economics and Latin American studies from Yale University. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University.