Dr. Tia Sherèe Gaynor, PhD

Tia Sherèe Gaynor, PhD, is an associate professor in the leadership and management area at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

She is a community-engaged scholar immersed in equity and inclusion. Her work explores the intersection of social justice, local government, and identity. More specifically, focusing on the ways identity-based narratives, negative social constructions, and decision-making lead to inequitable outcomes for people of color, those who identify as LGBTQIA, and people at the intersections of these and other identities. Her most recent work sits at the nexus of mindfulness, intergroup dialogue, and racial healing to explore avenues toward equity and justice.

Previously, Gaynor was at the University of Cincinnati, serving as a faculty member in the political science department, founding director of the Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation, and Taft Professor of Social Justice.

Dr. Gaynor’s research examining the perceptions people of color who identify as lesbian, gay and transgender hold of the New Orleans Police Department is currently supported by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs. Under the W.E.B. DuBois Program of Research on Race and Crime, Dr. Gaynor (along with research colleague Brandi Blessett, Ph.D.) was awarded $150,000 for her project titled “Intersectional Subjection and Law Enforcement: Examining Perceptions Held by LGBTQ People of Color in New Orleans, LA”. This research project tests the theory of intersectional subjection and empirically evaluates how policing has been used to ostracize and subjugate individuals with intersecting identities in New Orleans.

As an inaugural recipient of the Social Equity Fellowship offered by the American Society for Public Administration’s Center for Accountability and Performance and the National Academy of Public Administration’s (NAPA) Standing Panel on Social Equity in Governance, Dr. Gaynor was charged with developing strategies to measure and advance the performance measurement of social equity. The CAP Fellowship was designed to provide a balance between academic and practitioner perspectives by drawing from academic literature and empirical operational experiences. Dr. Gaynor’s work, ultimately, offers the field of public administration strategies to meaningfully develop and implement social social equity performance measures.

Dr. Gaynor recognizes that the scholarship and practice of public administrators can either serve as promoters of equity and justice or facilitators of injustice for underrepresented and marginalized populations. Her work is committed to not only recognizing this juxtaposition but offering strategies to foster justice and equity in the field.

She holds a Ph.D. and MPA from the School of Public Affairs and Administration, at Rutgers University – Newark. She received her BA in Psychology from Rutgers University – New Brunswick. Additionally, Dr. Gaynor holds a Diversity Management Certification from the University of Houston’s International Institute for Diversity.

Sub-specialities:
Public administration, race, gender identity, discriminatory policing, marginalization, public management, institutionalized racism