Menah Pratt

Menah Pratt is the Vice President for Strategic Affairs and Diversity and Professor of Education at Virginia Tech. With a PhD and JD from Vanderbilt and bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of Iowa, she has almost 25 years of leadership experience in higher education. Leadership roles include serving as chief strategy officer, chief diversity officer, university compliance officer, assistant secretary of the university, university board member, and attorney. Nationally recognized as a leader, scholar, and author of four books on issues of race, class, gender, culture, diversity, women’s leadership, education, and critical race feminism, Dr. Pratt is the founder of the Faculty Women of Color in the Academy National Conference, now in its 11th year and hosted by Virginia Tech and the Black College Institute for high achieving and intellectually curious high school students. Notable national awards include the 2023 Forum on Workplace Inclusion Individual Winds of Change award recipient; the 2021 Inclusive Excellence Individual Leadership Award recipient by the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education; and the 2018 American Education Studies Association Critics’ Choice Award for scholarship deemed to be outstanding in its field for A Black Woman’s Journey from Cotton Picking to College Professor: Lessons about race, gender, and class in America, a biography about her mother, Dr. Mildred Pratt. A writer, poet, public speaker, creative artist, scholar-activist, academic advocate, she regularly blogs at www.menahpratt.com.