About the Author |
Dr. Joyce LadnerDistrict of Columbia Control Board |
Joyce A. Ladner is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. She is also a Professor of Sociology (on leave) in the Howard University School of Social Work. She served as Interim President of Howard from 1994 to 1995 and Vice President for Academic Affairs from 1990 to 1994.
In 1995, she was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the District of Columbia Financial Control Board that was created to provide oversight and guidance in restructuring the city's finances and management. Ladner is the control board member with oversight for the public school system.
A nationally known scholar, Dr. Ladner has received the Doctor of Humane Letters from Howard University and Tougaloo College as well as numerous other academic and professional awards. She has published extensively in the areas of diversity, higher education, urban issues, public policy, family and gender problems. She has edited, authored, or co-authored four books, Tomorrow's Tomorrow: The Black Woman, The Death of White Sociology, Mixed Families: Adopting Across Racial Boundaries, and Lives of Promise, Lives of Pain: Young Mothers After New Chance. She is currently writing her memoirs on growing up in Mississippi during the civil rights era of the sixties, and a book titled The Ties That Bind: Timeless Values for African American Families to be published in 1999. Dr. Ladner has also appeared frequently on television news programs and National Public Radio, where she comments on social issues.
Dr. Ladner received her B.A. in sociology from Tougaloo College (1964), her M.A. (1966) and Ph. D. (1968) in sociology from Washington University in St. Louis. Her memberships include the Council of Foreign Relations, the American Sociological Association, and member of the boards of the Congressional Economic Leadership Institute, the U.S. Attorney General's Advisory Council on Violence Against Women, the Center for National Policy (vice-chair), the Washington Urban League, the Washington Women's Forum, the Coalition of 100 Black Women, and Suited for Change (an organization that helps poor women enter the job market).
