Leticia S. E. Haynes

   *she/her/hers*

Leticia Smith-Evans Haynes is the Vice President for Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Williams College. She is a member of the college’s senior staff, and in her role, she serves as the institution’s primary strategist working to ensure the Williams community is diverse, equitable and inclusive. She brings more than two decades of experience as an administrator, educator, civil rights advocate, and lawyer.

Haynes leads the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, which includes the Davis Center and the Office of Pathways for Inclusive Excellence, and efforts to assess campus climate, facilitate conversations and learning about equity and inclusion, develop and implement non-discrimination policies, and recruit and retain a diverse faculty, staff, and student body. She also engages and partners with the broader community to create inclusive living, learning, and working environments for families.

Haynes has been lauded for her work as a strategist, facilitator, and problem-solver and for keeping matters of diversity, equity, and inclusion at the fore of conversation and action.

Immediately prior to returning to Williams, Haynes directed the Education Practice at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) where she worked to further access to equal educational opportunities at the pre-kindergarten through post-secondary education levels. Her portfolio at LDF included school desegregation, access to higher education and the school-to-prison pipeline. She also served as a judicial law clerk to the late Honorable Dickinson R. Debevoise of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, an associate at a global law firm, a policy advisor to a Wisconsin Governor, and a public school teacher in New York City.

Haynes has contributed to and helped shape the national dialogue around promising practices in education, and led coalitions working to advance the rights of individuals with disabilities, racial and ethnic minorities, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, women, and immigrants. She has successfully argued before state and federal trial and appellate courts, most recently before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in a case in which she represented plaintiffs in a decades-old school desegregation case. She is co-author of Eliminating Excessive and Disparate School Discipline: A Review of Research and Policy Reform in Inequality in School Discipline (2016) and Unlocking Opportunity for African American Girls: A Call to Action for Educational Equity (2014); and author of Ensuring Equality in School Discipline Practices and Policies and Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline in A Call for Change: Providing Solutions for Black Male Achievement (2012).

She has served as adjunct faculty at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Graduate School of Education; and she is a member of several non-profit boards. Haynes received a B.A. from Williams College and a J.D., M.S., and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.