What is your lighthouse?
Every now and then, I need to step away and regroup, remember, and recall why I am in the world, what I am supposed to be doing in the world, and why am I doing what I am doing. So, I stepped away for a few days, came down from the mountain, as a wonderful […]
A Commencement Speech: Never Stop Toiling
My daughter, Raebekkah, graduated from the University of Illinois at age 19, in 2018 with a 3.98 GPA, and was top 3% of her graduating class, earning the coveted and exclusive Bronze Tablet. She was selected to deliver the student address for her college. It was so wonderful and inspiring (Yes, I know I’m biased), […]
The New Portrait Of Leadership: Menah Pratt On Which Legacy Ideas About Leadership Need To Be Discarded, And Which New Approaches To Leadership Should Be Embraced
Honored to have an interview on leadership with Karen Mangia at Medium. She wrote: “We are living in the Renaissance of Work. Just like great artists know that an empty canvas can become anything, great leaders know that an entire organization — and the people inside it — can become anything, too. Master Artists and […]
Gender and Race: Intertwined and Inseparable
When it is about gender, it should also be about race As the founder of the Faculty Women of Color in the Academy National Conference, I often reflect on the inseparable and intertwined relationship between race and gender. https://www.inclusive.vt.edu/Programs/FWCA.html This weekend over 600 women of color in the academy, including graduate students, faculty, and administrators, […]
A Letter to Mama
May 14, 2023 A Mama’s Day Letter Dear Mama, I miss you! But, I’m out here in the world doing my thing, hopefully making you proud. It’s been more than 10 years since you transitioned to a new journey in 2012. I’m now the Vice President of Strategic Affairs and Diversity at Virginia Tech, and […]
When a Black Woman Walks Into a Room
Two years ago I wrote a poem, When A Black Woman Walks Into a Room in honor of my mother, Mildred Pratt. It is below: When a Black woman walks into a room, something happens. For how could it not? For when we walk into a room, we bring the ancestral power of generations, […]
A Black Woman’s Blog Posts
“A Black Woman’s Blog Posts: Writing for Personal and Social Empowerment and Healing is a book chapter in Writing for Wellbeing: Theory, Research and Practice by Katrin Den Elzen (Editor), Reinekke Lengelle (Editor), forthcoming in 2023. An overview is below: Writing can support our wellbeing under the most difficult of life circumstances, helping us to adapt to […]
From Harlequin to Hallmark
I don’t remember when it started… My absolute love and obsession with Hallmark movies. Well, maybe it started when I was young, and I smuggled Harlequin Romance novels home in high school; secretly reading and devouring love stories – love where a delicate and vulnerable girl was captivated by some rugged, handsome, and a little […]
Seven years ago
I started working at Virginia Tech, 7 years ago on this date, February 1, 2016. I started reflecting on how far we have come as an institution. Seven years, in the Christian tradition, as well as in astrology, and indigenous perspectives, is a time period that represents a milestone. After seven years, there is a […]
Reflections on the 1619 Project
I recently read The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones. It’s a book that has generated legislation in Iowa, South Dakota, Missouri, Arkansas and Mississippi to prohibit schools from teaching The 1619 Project or cut funding from those that do. I needed to understand why the book was banned. I needed to understand the content. The reading was so important for me and it […]