"I'm proud to be Black, and I'm proud to be Black because that's how my parents raised me. It's more than a colour, it's more than the melanin of my skin. It's something that embodies my ancestors, my African and my Caribbean heritage."
Annette Hay is a Senior Research Delivery Support Partner at Coventry University and an Advance HE Board member. She completed her first Degree in Social Studies at the University of Warwick and later completed her Masters Degree in Leadership and Management at Coventry University. She is also an alumni of Advance HE’s Diversifying Leadership Programme.
Annette has over 30 years of activism around equity, diversity and inclusion, which she has maintained throughout her working career in higher education and is a passionate and strategic advocate for the role and importance of institutional leadership in tackling racial inequalities and embedding anti-racist practices. She has a substantive role supporting, developing and implementing a number of strategic and operational initiatives and actions at her institution.
As well as the Advance HE Board, Annette is a member of several other Boards and Committees including Coventry University’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Council, including Chair of the Equity Acceleration Group and Race Equality Council. She is currently the first and only international Board member of the esteemed American based ‘National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education’ (NADOHE), which is the leading voice for Senior Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Officers. She is one of the founding members of the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Group for the Association of Research Management and Administration (ARMA), a member of the Women in Higher Education Network (WHEN) and an alumni of the international-focused leadership Common Purpose programme.
Watch Annette’s video here