Captain Ivonne Roman

Ivonne Roman has 25 years of experience in urban policing, having held every rank from police officer to police chief. She founded the Women’s Leadership Academy in 2018, to address the stagnating rates of women in policing, and the high attrition rates for female applicants and recruits. She works as a consultant on topics of recruitment and retention of policewomen, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission requirements for validating physical fitness tests. She serves as a subject matter expert on women in policing for the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

Her work on women in policing inspired the National Institute of Justice, Women in Policing summit held in December 2018. The summit was attended by over 100 police managers, academics and organization leaders and will culminate in a report outlining research priorities. She was selected as a 2019 TED Talks fellow based on her advocacy work to increase female representation in policing using research evidence and case law. USA Today feature on her work, and high attrition rates for women in policing in NJ led to a NJ attorney general review of Police Training Commission policies and their impacts.

Roman serves as an executive board member of the National Police Foundation and the American Society for Evidence-Based Policing. She is a National Institute of Justice Law Enforcement Advancing Data and Science (LEADS) scholar.

She is also a PhD student in Rutgers-Camden, Public Affairs and Community Development program. Her research focuses on recruitment and retention of women in policing, organization justice and police perceptions of legitimacy.

Sub-specialties: Evidence-Based Policing, Police and Criminal Justice Reform, Organization Legitimacy and Procedural Justice, Women in Police, Gender Discrimination, Disorder Policing, Broken Windows, Zero Tolerance Policing