Dr. Robert Adams
Chair of SC250 Committee
Dr. Adams was born in Bangor, Maine, and raised in military institutions across the South (Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Texas). He earned an M.A. in sociology from the University of Florida and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin. Robert has worked extensively in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, Latin America, and North America.
Previously, Dr. Adams served as the Senior Vice President of Programs at the NEA Foundation in Washington, DC, overseeing the Foundation’s grantmaking programs. Dr. Adams has also worked as an Executive-on-Loan/Interim Chief Operating Officer at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, a Program Officer at the Fetzer Institute in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Associate Director of the Institute of African American Research at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Dr. Adams recently served as Co-Founder and Principal for Sargent Adams Consulting LLC. in Boston, MA. He provided strategic guidance on change management and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) for Fortune 500, government, labor, and nonprofit clients.
Dr. Adams was a 2008 U.S. Fulbright Faculty Fellow at the Catholic University of São Paulo in Brazil, a 2016 Association of Black Foundation Executives (ABFE) Connecting Leaders Fellow, and a 2003 International Career Advancement Program (ICAP) Fellow. He is the author of more than 15 publications, including editor of Rewriting the African Diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean: Beyond Disciplinary and National Boundaries (Routledge 2013).
“I am honored to be chosen by the Penn Center’s Board of Trustees to lead this hallowed institution. I humbly follow in the footsteps of a long line of distinguished leaders who have made impactful contributions to the history of Penn Center and our national history. I look forward to working with the Board, community, and other stakeholders to continue the center’s position as a ‘living laboratory of Black freedom’ and guardian of Gullah-Geechee culture,” said Dr. Robert L. Adams.