A New Era of Excellence

If Dr. Valerie Kinloch could tell her teenage self anything, she’d say “Girl, stop doubting yourself and do not listen to anyone who tells you that you cannot achieve your dreams and goals.”

As she pictured herself at 18, she began to uplift and encourage her younger self.

Dr. Valerie Kinloch“I would sit Valerie down and tell her, ‘If you want to be a president, get to working on and learning what that means. You might be the change that we need in the world,” says Kinloch.

Whether she could visualize it or not, that young freshman at Johnson C. Smith University would eventually become the institution’s president, whose scholarly work has been lauded and celebrated across the years.

In August 2023, Kinloch became the 15th president of JCSU — the only historically Black college and university (HBCU) in the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, founded in 1867 by formerly enslaved Black people. She is only the second woman to hold the position in the school’s 157-year history.

Kinloch’s Journey to the Presidency