Dr. Johnna Frierson’s office says a lot about her. There’s a poster from the movie Hidden Figures on the wall. A notebook — featuring famous women in STEM on the cover — rests on her desk. And she has a collection of mugs, one with a picture of Rep. Maxine Waters that says, “Reclaiming My Time.”
Frierson started as the assistant dean for graduate and postdoctoral diversity and inclusion for the Duke University School of Medicine in July. And in the little time she’s had, she’s already been busy. In her current role, she leads a new office called IDEALS or Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Advancement, and Leadership in the Sciences, created to serve graduate and postdoctoral students doing research in biomedical sciences.
“It’s been a whirlwind,” she says.
Frierson comes to her new position with experience in both the sciences and diversity work. She earned her bachelor’s degree in biology at Furman University and completed the Initiative for Maximizing Student Diversity postbaccalaureate program at Vanderbilt University where she completed her Ph.D. in virology. She also did postdoctoral work at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Medicine. Her research focused on how viruses attach to cells, a critical step toward infection. She then became founding director of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke, where she served since 2015.
Frierson’s experience in her postbaccalaureate program laid the foundation for the work she does today. There, the program provided her with a strong cohort of students of color in a university where she was often the only African-American woman — or African-American — in the laboratory.
The juxtaposition raised questions for her. She had a minority peer group of scholars she deeply respected but she still often found herself in academic spaces where people from underrepresented backgrounds weren’t present.
“I definitely understood the importance of mentoring, connecting with people and being comfortable in the space that you’re in, especially as a minority student,” she says.
