Anna (Enobong) Branch, Ph.D. is a scholar and strategist who helps move organizations and leaders from well-meaning to well-doing. She serves as the senior vice president for equity at Rutgers University and provides strategic leadership to ensure that the institutional commitment to equity is reflected in the research, educational, and community engagement efforts that occur throughout the university and the focus extends to faculty, staff, and students.
Prior to joining Rutgers University, Dr. Branch served as associate chancellor for equity and inclusion at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst. Her significant accomplishments in that role included leading the integration of diversity throughout the campus strategic plan, executing the university’s campus climate survey, creating diversity infrastructure through climate advisors in executive areas and diversity officers in schools and colleges, and leading the National Science Foundation funded ADVANCE program pursuing innovative organizational change strategies to spur institutional transformation and support racial and gender equity in the faculty ranks.
A professor of sociology, Dr. Branch’s commitment to advancing equity extends to academic research on labor and work that explores the historical roots and contemporary underpinnings of racial and gender inequality. She is the coauthor of Work in Black and White: Striving for the American Dream (2022), coauthor of Black in America: The Paradox of the Color Line (2020), the editor of Pathways, Potholes, and the Persistence of Women in Science: Reconsidering the Pipeline (2016), and the author of Opportunity Denied: Limiting Black Women to Devalued Work (2011). A sought-after national expert on diversity in the academy, Branch serves on several advisory boards that aim to advance inclusive excellence within professional societies, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Action Collaborative, the Association of American Universities Racial Equity Advisory Board and more. Dr. Branch received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University at Albany, SUNY and her B.S. in biology from Howard University.