As part of Dartmouth’s ongoing effort to functionally align institutional needs around diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, the team responsible for implementing policies and procedures related to equal opportunity and Title IX will soon report to Jomysha Delgado Stephen, the incoming executive vice president for strategy, chief of staff, and special counsel to the president, who begins her role in August.
In the interim, the staff working in these areas—which had been part of Institutional Diversity and Equity—began reporting to Chief Compliance Officer Alejandro Diaz, effective April 3. Diaz’s unit will also be reporting to Stephen to allow institution-wide compliance and related functions to be housed together.
Shontay Delalue, Dartmouth’s inaugural senior vice president and senior diversity officer, says the change grew out of her charge to assess Dartmouth’s current and future DEIB strategy, supported by President Philip J. Hanlon ’77 and President-elect Sian Leah Beilock.
The reorganization comes with a name change—the Equity and Compliance Office will now be known as the Equal Opportunity, Accessibility, and Title IX Office.
Despite the name change, its function remains the same: The group addresses matters related to the Americans With Disabilities Act, affirmative action programs, and Title IX—the law that prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded education programs—as well other issues broadly related to discrimination and harassment.
The group will be led by a new vice president for Equal Opportunity and Title IX, Anthony Brown, who begins May 2.
Kristi Clemens will continue in her role as assistant vice president and Title IX coordinator.
“I look forward to partnering with Jomysha and Anthony. These shifts will allow for better alignment of this critical work and ensure that both of our areas, equal opportunity compliance and DEIB strategy, continue to be resourced and supported,” Delalue says.
Brown comes to Dartmouth from the City University of New York-Brooklyn College, where he has served as executive chief diversity officer and special assistant to the president since 2019. He has also worked as director of investigations and policy and deputy Title IX coordinator at the University of Texas at Austin and a supervisory attorney and team leader with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, where he previously served as an equal opportunity specialist.
Brown earned a BA in political science at Howard University and BA in public policy from Michigan State University, a master’s of public policy from University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and a JD from the University of California Hastings College of Law.
“I am very excited to become a part of the Dartmouth community,” says Brown. “My approach to equal opportunity work is fundamental—if we have invited you to be a part of our community, you should be afforded the equal opportunity to participate.”
As part of the overall structural changes in Institutional Diversity and Equity, Chloe Poston has been promoted to vice president for culture, belonging, and strategic engagement. Poston has served as associate vice president for strategic initiatives since 2021. The new role is an operational position that focuses on building internal partnerships with unit leads and diversity practitioners to further DEIB at Dartmouth.
“This is a recognition of Chloe’s tireless efforts in championing diversity and inclusion work,” Delalue says.
Poston, who earned a PhD in chemistry from Brown University, has more than a decade of experience in DEIB work, including roles at Eli Lilly & Company, the National Science Foundation, and as a consultant at the National Institutes of Health. She developed and implemented programs to diversify the research workforce at the national office of the Leadership Alliance, a consortium of Research 1 and minority-serving institutions, and co-led the development of Phase II of the Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan at Brown.
“I am energized by the launch of Toward Equity and the collaborative initiatives in development to make Dartmouth more inclusive,” says Poston, referring to the institutional strategic plan for DEIB that was formally unveiled earlier this year. “I look forward to continuing to build partnerships and lead efforts to meet institutional needs for diversity, inclusion, and belonging.”
The equity team in its current form was brought together in 2020, prior to Delalue’s arrival, and she and the team have worked together since 2021 to develop the office and elevate its work. The team has grown to include an institutional ADA/504 coordinator and an associate director and has successfully updated Dartmouth’s nondiscrimination and anti-harassment policy.
“It is healthy for Dartmouth to evaluate where critical functions related to policy and compliance belong in the institutional structure, and to make changes in that structure as such programs mature,” says Diaz. “As I consider the compliance landscape across the institution, this is a change that will position equal opportunity, accessibility, and Title IX to continue to serve the whole community while structurally sitting in a better-aligned unit.”