Cass Cliatt got an email from a teacher at a predominantly Black charter school in New Orleans, Louisiana. It came with a photo of a bulletin board with her picture on it, next to pictures of the first Black ballet dancer, the first Black governor and the first Black astronaut. Above the pictures, a heading read, “Rise up, you can be next.”
The headshot was from a Brown University announcement that Cliatt would become the institution’s vice president for communications.
The teacher wrote, “I just want you to know that you’re an example to our students.”
Cliatt tears up when she tells the story. She didn’t know it then, but she’s the first Black person to lead communications at a senior executive level – meaning she reports directly to the president and works with the board of trustees – at an Ivy-League institution, plus Stanford, Duke, MIT and University of Chicago.
She stressed that she has “amazing colleagues who have been doing this job tirelessly at amazing universities for years.” But at that moment, she was reminded that people look to Ivy-League schools as a model, that now people were looking to her as a model.
Now she’s been at Brown for six years. And because she serves under the president, her role brings her into “the room” with university leaders, where her perspective as a Black woman from a low-income background can contribute to their collective work.
“Being in the room at the senior level can be very important as our campuses continue aggressive efforts to be places where students, faculty and staff from historically underrepresented groups feel included and can thrive and succeed,” she said. “I feel very fortunate to be at an institution where I can bring my authentic self into some really sensitive conversations about university positioning, values and actions.”
