Three Women Who Have Been Appointed Diversity Officers in Higher Education

Jessica Funes is the inaugural coordinator for inclusion in the Office of Veterans Affairs at the City University of New York. CUNY’s student-veteran population is 32 percent Black, 27 percent Hispanic, 24 percent White, and 17 percent Asian. Women are 26 percent of the university’s veteran students.

An Army veteran who served in Iraq, Funes holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Queens College and a master’s degree in human rights from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Both are campuses of the City University of New York.

Jennifer Hamer was appointed special adviser to the president of Pennsylvania State University for institutional equity. She has been serving as interim associate vice provost for educational equity at the university. Dr. Hamer is a professor of African American studies and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. She is the author of two books, Abandoned in the Heartland: Work, Family and Living in East St. Louis (University of California Press, 2011) and What it Means to Be Daddy: Fatherhood for Black Men Living Away From Their Children (Columbia University Press, 2001).

Professor Hamer earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of Texas at San Antonio. She holds a master’s degree in sociology from Texas A&M University and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin.

Sandra Mitchell will become the inaugural senior diversity officer at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University in St. Joseph, Minnesota. She will begin her new duties on January 2. Since 2019, she has served as the director of equity and inclusion at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Mitchell holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in higher education from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.