Janice Branch Hall has joined the Pamplin College of Business as its first director of diversity and inclusion.

Her responsibilities will include assessment, strategic planning, and coordination of diversity and inclusion efforts to advance stakeholders of the college. She will coordinate diversity efforts in the college and be Pamplin’s liaison with the university’s Office of Inclusion and Diversity.

A core component of her work will include partnering with department heads to advance faculty diversity. She will work to proactively create opportunities for outreach and engagement with other university and community partners as well as national organizations to identify ways to increase and retain underrepresented faculty.

Hall has more than 10 years of professional experience. She led diversity initiatives for the Haslam College of Business at the University of Tennessee–Knoxville, where she served recently as assistant director for academic support and partnerships for the Office of Diversity and Community Relations, and the Wake Forest University School of Business.

She has facilitated leadership workshops for the Argentinian Fulbright Scholars Program, the UTK Professional Development Conference for Women, the SEC Business Diversity Officers Conference, the Virginia Tech Faculty Women of Color Conference, and various student organizations. 

Hall received the 2018 UTK Greek Council President’s Choice Award and was inducted in the 2018 Knox.biz Top 40 Under 40 class. 

A Richmond, Virginia, native, Hall received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the College of William and Mary and a master’s in management from the Wake Forest School of Business.  

She is working on her Ph.D. in higher education administration at UTK. Her research interests focus on diversity in business education — specifically, understanding the lived experiences of black female tenure-track faculty in business schools at predominantly white institutions in an effort to increase and retain this underrepresented group.