Shirley Ramirez, Vice President for Institutional Planning & Diversity

As vice president for institutional planning and diversity and a member of the president’s staff, Shirley Ramirez works to ensure that diversity issues are an integral aspect of all institutional initiatives and strategic planning.  President Liebowitz hired Vice President Ramirez as the institution’s first chief diversity officer in December 2006. Vice President Ramirez acts as both a leader and a consultant in the effort to recruit and retain a faculty, staff and student body of varied backgrounds and interests. She is also an assistant professor of psychology at Middlebury College.

Prior to this critical role at Middlebury, Vice President Ramirez served six years as the executive vice president of The Posse Foundation, an organization that identifies, recruits and selects outstanding student leaders from public high schools to form multicultural teams called “Posses” that go on to top colleges and universities nationwide. At Posse, Vice President Ramirez was responsible for managing the administrative and overall operations of the organization on a national level. Middlebury College has worked with Posse for over eight years. Vice President Ramirez was a member of the very first Posse when the organization started and is the first Posse Scholar to earn a doctorate.

Vice President Ramirez earned her masters and doctorate degrees in Clinical Psychology from Duke University. She earned her bachelor of science degree in Human & Organizational Development from Vanderbilt University. Her research has primarily focused on the experience of racism and coping responses among Latinos in the United States. She has worked extensively with multicultural populations struggling with trauma including sexual abuse, political torture, war trauma, acculturative stress, hate crimes and domestic violence. 

Vice President Ramirez has taught as an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown University and George Mason University teaching several courses including Psychology of Women, Minority Mental Health and Cross-Cultural Therapeutic Skills. Most recently she worked as an adjunct assistant professor at New York University and the Milano Graduate School of Management & Urban Policy at New School University where she taught courses focused on research methods, leadership development, management and organizational behavior and organizational change.