Caroline Laguerre-Brown is the Principal and CEO of Designing Equity, LLC, a higher education consulting practice where she provides a wide range of support for national higher education focused associations, post-secondary institutions, and corporations. She is a seasoned lawyer with deep expertise in diversity, inclusion, and institutional compliance. Caroline has an extensive background leading the design and implementation of policies, educational programs, and risk management activities for global organizations related to a broad range of anti-discrimination laws. She specializes in sexual harassment policy, prevention and compliance management. Caroline is an experienced facilitator/trainer on a wide variety of workplace discrimination and diversity training topics, including unconscious bias and anti-racism training. She also plays a central role helping senior leaders develop strategic communications to manage crises and mitigate reputational harm.
Caroline previously served as the Vice Provost for Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She oversaw multiple departments serving 26,000 students including the Title IX/Sexual Assault Prevention office, the Multicultural Student Services Center, GW’s Honey W. Nashman Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service, and the Office of Disability Support Services. She joined the GW Community in August of 2016 and led an external review and overhaul of the university’s sexual harassment/assault policy and currently leads GW’s first university-wide diversity program review.
Prior to joining GW, Caroline served as the Vice Provost and Chief Diversity Officer at Johns Hopkins University where she developed their first university-wide sexual harassment prevention training initiative, spearheaded unconscious bias training for faculty search committees, launched a Race in America speaker series, and co-developed a comprehensive faculty diversity initiative.
Caroline currently serves as a member of the Board of Trustees for the Union Theological Seminary, a charter committee member of the Atlantic Fellows for Health Equity, and an advisory board member of the George Washington University Online High School. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE). Caroline serves as a member of the faculty of NADOHE’s Standards of Professional Practice Institute, training future chief diversity officers.
She is a graduate of the State University of New York at Binghamton and the University of Virginia School of Law. Caroline is admitted to practice in New York, the District of Columbia, and Maryland. She is a member of the National Association of College and University Attorneys where she has served on multiple expert panels for compliance and diversity-related topics.
Kimberly Hewitt was appointed Vice President for Institutional Equity and Chief Diversity Officer at Duke in August 2019. Prior to coming to Duke, she served as the Vice Provost for Institutional Equity at Johns Hopkins University from March 2017 to July 2019. At Johns Hopkins Ms. Hewitt led the University’s efforts to comply with equal opportunity laws including Title IX and oversaw the ADA compliance function. Additionally, Ms. Hewitt leveraged her experience to make several improvements to the policy and practices at OIE at Johns Hopkins including building a strong team and improving collaboration across the institution.
Prior to her time at Johns Hopkins, Ms. Hewitt served as the Director of the Office for Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action (EOAA) from 2007 to 2017 and was Deputy Chief of Staff for the Office for Equity and Diversity from 2014 – 2017 at the University of Minnesota. As the Director of EOAA she led a team of investigators on issues of discrimination, harassment and sexual misconduct and oversaw the University’s Affirmative Action Program. In addition, she worked closely with the Director of Education for the University to develop a diversity leadership development program, a diversity certificate workshop series and unconscious bias training.
Ms. Hewitt started her career in higher education as assistant dean for students and multicultural affairs at Hamline University School of Law. She also has 14 years of experience practicing law in the areas of employment, labor, and education law. She was previously a partner in the law firm Rider Bennett, where she was the chair of the Education Law Practice and also served as an in-house attorney for the Minneapolis Public Schools. Ms. Hewitt holds an A.B. from Stanford University and a J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School.