Dr. Michael L. Lomax, President and Chief Executive Officer, UNCF

Since 2004, Dr. Michael L. Lomax has served as president and CEO of UNCF, the nation’s largest private provider of scholarships and other educational support to African American students and a leading advocate of college readiness: students’ need for an education, from pre-school through high school, that prepares them for college success. Under his leadership, UNCF has raised more than $3 billion and helped more than 110,000 students earn college degrees and launch careers.  Annually, UNCF’s work enables 60,000 students to go to college with UNCF scholarships and attend its 37 member historically black college and universities (HBCUs). 

At UNCF’s helm, Dr. Lomax oversees the organization’s 400 scholarship programs, which award 10,000 scholarships a year.  He also launched the UNCF Institute for Capacity Building, which helps UNCF’s member HBCUs become stronger, more effective and more self-sustaining.   

Under Dr. Lomax’s leadership, UNCF has fought for college readiness and education reform through partnerships with reform-focused leaders and organizations and worked to further advance HBCUs with Congress, the administration and the Department of Education.  He serves on the boards of the KIPP Foundation, America’s Promise, Teach for America and the Studio Museum in Harlem. 

Before joining UNCF, Dr. Lomax was president of Dillard University in New Orleans and a literature professor at UNCF-member institutions Morehouse and Spelman Colleges.  He also founded the National Black Arts Festival, was a founding member of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) and served as chairman of the Fulton County Commission in Atlanta, the first African American elected to that post.  

Ronald F. Ferguson, Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and the Achievement Gap Initiative (AGI) at Harvard University

Ronald F. Ferguson is an MIT-trained economist who focuses social science research on economic, social, and educational challenges.  He has been on the faculty at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government since 1983, after full time appointments at Brandeis and Brown Universities. In 2014, he co-founded Tripod Education Partners and shifted into an adjunct role at the Kennedy School, where he remains a faculty affiliated at the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy and was faculty director of the Achievement Gap Initiative (AGI) from 2005-2020.

During the 1980s and ‘90s Ronald focused much of his attention on economic and community development. That work culminated in the social science synthesis volume Urban Problems and Community Development (1999), which remains an important text in graduate policy courses.

By the late 1980s he had begun to study education and youth development because academic skill disparities were contributing to growing wage disparity. During the 1990s and early 2000s, his writings on the topic appeared in publications of the National Research Council, the Brookings Institution, the U.S. Department of Education, and various books and journals. In December 2007, Harvard Education Press published his book Toward Excellence with Equity: An Emerging Vision for Closing the Achievement Gap. A February 2011 profile of Ronald in the New York Times wrote, “there is no one in America who knows more about the gap than Ronald Ferguson.”

For the past several years, Ronald’s focus as AGI director has been an initiative first entitled the Boston Basics. Now renamed simply The Basics, the project has moved out of Harvard into a nonprofit organization, The Basics, Inc. Beginning in 2016, implementation has spread to more than three-dozen other cities in The Basics Learning Network. The Basics Strategy takes a socio-ecological saturation approach, collaborating with many partners to reach extended families with five The Basics Principles of caregiving advice for parenting infants and toddlers.

Also focused on parenting, Ronald and co-author Tatsha Robertson have written The Formula: Unlocking the Secrets to Raising Highly Successful Children, published in February, 2019. Based on the life stories of extremely successful young adults, as told by them and their parents, the book reveals eight principles or parental roles that appear repeatedly throughout the stories of families from a wide range of racial, ethnic, and income-level backgrounds.

Ronald holds an undergraduate degree from Cornell University and a PhD from MIT, both in economics. He is happily married and the father of two adult sons.

A'Dorian Murray-Thomas, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, SHE Wins, Inc.

A’Dorian Murray-Thomas is the Founder and CEO of SHE Wins Inc., a leadership and mentoring organization for girls in Newark. A’Dorian founded SHE Wins to create a pipeline of college, career, and community-ready young women leaders, working particularly with young women who share her story of losing a loved one to gun violence. Approaching youth development from a trauma-informed and gender-equity lens, A’Dorian created SHE Wins to use peer mentorship and service-learning to empower Newark's next generation of young women leaders, work that today has reached more than 500 girls through summer, afterschool, and community programs. 

A’Dorian previously served at the Newark Opportunity Youth Network where she helped tackle Newark’s dropout and suspension crisis through innovative alternative education and restorative justice programs, in addition to serving as a translator for Spanish-speaking families. A’Dorian recently made history where at 23 years old, she became the youngest woman ever elected to the Newark Board of Education, the largest school district in the state of New Jersey. She has also served as a Board Member on the Essex County Regional Educational Services Commission. 

A’Dorian has been recognized as a President Obama White House Champion of Change, Glamour Magazine “College Woman of the Year”, Youth Service America “Everyday Young Hero”, “The Root” Magazine Young Futurist, and several other awards for her work in education and youth development. Her organization SHE Wins Inc. has been featured in ESSENCE Magazine’s 'Black Girl Magic’ docuseries, ABC’s “Here and Now” talk show, The New Jersey Star Ledger, USA Today, Positive Community Magazine, Fox Nightly News, and more.

A fierce advocate for gender, racial, and educational equity, A’Dorian is currently an NAACP NextGen Leadership Fellow, a School Board Partners Education Policy Fellow, and a recent graduate of Higher Heights’ national fellowship for Black women leaders. A’Dorian is a 2016 graduate of Swarthmore College and holds a B.A. in Political Science and Educational Studies.

Colleen Taylor, President, Merchant Services at American Express 

Colleen Taylor serves as president of merchant services in the U.S. for American Express. She oversees the firm’s relationships with the millions of U.S. businesses that accepts its cards. Prior to joining American Express, Taylor served as the Executive Vice President, Head of Wells Fargo Merchant Services, and prior to that, Taylor served as the executive vice president, New Payments, at Mastercard, where she was responsible for driving volume growth from B2B, government and new economy (P2P, C2B, B2C, BlockChain, etc.) sources. She joined Mastercard from Capital One Bank, where she served as the head/executive vice president of Treasury Management & Merchant Services at Capital One Bank (USA), National Association.

With almost 20 years of experience in the financial services industry, Taylor supported the Commercial Banking group. She was responsible for developing and managing a geographically diverse group of teams engaged in supporting business development, implementation and servicing efforts within the bank's real estate, middle market, small business and private banking groups. Taylor leads the Merchant Services business, leveraging Capital One's footprint and brand to increase market share, revenue and profitability.

Before joining Capital One, she served as senior vice president of Global Payments & Liquidity Services at Wachovia Bank, where she led the efforts of their Liquidity Management group, including product management for active and passive investment products and balances. Taylor also spent fifteen years in various roles at J.P. Morgan Chase and its predecessor company, Chase Manhattan, including several years as senior vice president, Revenue and Balance Management Business Executive. Capital One says that under Taylor, the business notched consistent improvements in the quality of its sales officers and overall client experiences, based on feedback from industry surveys. This helped boost revenue each year since her arrival in 2009.

Colleen is a Spelman College graduate and received her MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. She chairs the Samaritan Village Daytop Foundation Board, serves on the boards of Teach For America New York and Year-Up New York, is a trustee of Spelman College and is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated. She is also favorite auntie to 14 nieces and nephews.