Dr. Denise Jones Gregory is Jackson State University's sixth president in 10 years.
The Associated Press recently reported that Dr. Denise Jones Gregory will receive coaching in her role as president of Jackson State University, a role she has held as interim since May of 2025. Dr. Kim Bobby, principal at AGB Search who previously served as the first chief diversity officer at the University of Puget Sound (WA), told the AP that Jackson State’s “cultural significance as a historically Black university” was considered in the training’s design.
Gregory, who is Jackson State’s sixth president in 10 years and tenth in 15 years, knows perhaps better than many the institutional context at Jackson State; before stepping into the interim role, she served as provost and vice president of academic affairs at the institution, she is a magna cum laude graduate of the institution and a life member of the Jackson State University National Alumni Association, and her husband is a former JSU quarterback and helped lead the Tigers to three SWAC championships in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.
The decision to include outside coaching for the role is unprecedented: Gregory will be the first JSU president for whom this benefit is available. And in a space where HBCU leadership networks, like the Higher Education Leadership Foundation and the Executive Leadership Institute at Clark Atlanta University, have proven track records of working with and developing strong HBCU leaders, it begs the age-old question of who is best positioned to support HBCU administrators’ development.
Dr. Melva K. Wallace, president of Huston-Tillotson University, and a graduate of Jackson State University’s executive Ph.D. program – of which seven current HBCU presidents are graduates – said she believes it’s “important to get as much support as possible” as a president, particularly from those who are facing similar institutional or personal contexts.
“I’ve worked at a community college, I’ve worked at a [predominantly white institution], a private liberal arts institution, I’ve worked at a state institution, I’ve worked at a system, I’ve worked at a small HBCU – and all of those are different [with different institutional contexts],” she said.
Part of what Wallace appreciated about Jackson State’s own program, which she said was “phenomenal,” was the ability to learn from world-class faculty who were themselves former HBCU presidents and leaders, she said.
“It was HBCU-centric, the faculty had HBCU experience. I leaned on folks like former president [Neari Francois] Warner, who was former president of Grambling. … 10/10 do recommend,” said Wallace. “Finding as much likeness in leadership and what you’re dealing with is important.”
Wallace co-founded the Higher Education Leadership Foundation with JSU classmate and Wiley University President Dr. Herman Felton to help provide that support, rooted in the HBCU historical and cultural context, to fellow presidents and aspiring HBCU leaders.
“You don’t have a peer on campus as the president,” Wallace continued. “There isn’t a colleague or peer, where the vice presidents can bounce stuff off of each other. Oftentimes, reaching out to another HBCU president is beneficial, and it has helped me tremendously. The HBCU space is very nuanced, it’s very different than our traditional institutions,” Wallace said, noting that even something as simple as how to protect the institution during homecoming is a different conversation.
“To me, what we provide is the network of presidents who can ‘break glass in case of emergency,’ that fraternity, that sorority to say if something – when something – happens, you can instantly call one of us,” she said.
Sources familiar with Jackson State’s campus say it is perhaps her time as provost that will serve Gregory the best at an institution where the faculty-administration relationship has been marked as turbulent in recent years. But what is for sure true is that if she is to be more successful in the role than her last two predecessors, she will need to lean on a large network of people who not only understand institutional leadership broadly, but the cultural context of HBCUs, SWAC institutions, and being a Black woman president specifically.
