about irma
I believe you must change hearts, change minds, and change behavior to achieve transformation.
Dr. Irma McClaurin, Black Feminist Speaker, is a woman of many talents who believes profoundly that you must “change minds, change hearts, change behavior to achieve transformation.” She is an activist bio-cultural anthropologist who studies the social construction of inequality. McClaurin is the founder and senior consultant of Irma McClaurin Solutions (IMS), a business that is focused on leadership and organizational development; diversity and change strategies; authentic community engagement practices; and research and evaluations. McClaurin seeks to find immediate and sustainable solutions to emerging and urgent issues, and offers support informed by past experiences as a president of Shaw University and Chief Diversity Officer at Teach For America. Dubbed an “academic entrepreneur,” she has held numerous executive positions that include grant making and fundraising. She has a background in policy and was a senior faculty at the Federal Executive Institute (FEI) teaching leadership education to senior federal executives.
Vision, passion, clear values, and a deep commitment to social justice have guided Dr. McClaurin through a successful journey as a leader, and now as a consultant she gives back by leveraging what she’s learned in her work with clients. She is an effective coach who focuses on leadership development and helping individuals navigate career and life changes, a public speaker and TV-Radio commentator, and also conducts workshops on a variety of topics related to social justice, black feminism/feminism, organizational change and transformation, leadership and resilience, diversity, community engagement, ethnographic research and methods, public writing, cultural/bio-cultural anthropology, poetry, and literature.
Dr. McClaurin recently founded the “Irma McClaurin Black Feminist Archive” in 2016; it is a collaboration with the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s W.E.B. Du Bois Library Department of Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) and the W.E.B. Du Bois Center. She now presents nationally on the Archive and has appeared on ABC7 “Here and Now” to talk about this legacy project. In 2019, the @CiteBlackWomen launched its inaugural podcast with an interview with McClaurin on the Black Feminist Archive. And Ms. Magazine published an interview about the Archive in 2018. On her vision, Dr. McClaurin says:
This Archive will be a game changer by preserving and showcasing the intellectual and activist contributions of Black Feminists for all eternity.
A complete bio can be downloaded.
Who I Am
- Activist Anthropologist
- Asylum expert witness
- Award-winning Author
- Black feminist author
- Black feminist speaker
- Black Feminist Archive founder
- Diversity champion and consultant
- Executive coach
- Feminist and social justice poet
- Free-lance Writer and Editor
- Leadership consultant and guru
- Leadership resilience trainer
- Professor of anthropology and literature
- Researcher and Evaluator
- Writing coach
Dr. McClaurin Accepts UMass Distinguished Alumni Award
Read why Dr. McClaurin was recognized in 2018 as a “UMass Woman Philanthropist You Should Know” by the University of Massachusetts Alumni Association.