Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Week is made possible by the dedication of our team members.
Camille Gear Rich
Associate Provost for Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives, and Professor of Law and Sociology, USC Gould School of Law
Camille Gear Rich joined the USC Gould School of Law faculty in the fall of 2007 following five years of private practice. Her research and teaching interests include constitutional law, feminist legal theory, family law, children and the law and the First Amendment. She is the founder and director of PRYSM: The USC Initiative for the Study of Race, Gender, Sexuality and the Law. She is also the founding director of Gould’s First Generation Legal Professionals program. Rich is widely know for her research on law, discrimination and identity formation issues related to race, class, gender and sexuality. Rich was a visiting professor at Stanford Law School in Winter/Spring of 2017. She was a visiting professor at Yale Law School in Spring 2019. Professor Rich will be a visiting online professor at the University of Virginia Law School in Spring 2021.
Rich is also the associate provost of diversity and inclusion, and had previously served as associate provost for student and faculty initiatives in the social sciences since 2016. While serving as associate provost she co-founded Diversity and Inclusion Awareness Week, an education series that has grown into a 68 event program that provides a range of diversity-related training sessions to the USC community. Additionally she was co-founder of Wicked Problems Practicuum, a cross-school program that invites graduate students from various programs to create think-tanks that partner with community and government agencies to collaborate on solving wicked problems affecting global mega-cities. She also launched the cross-school First Generation Professionals Program, which brings FGP students from across USC’s 19 schools together to share resources and experiences.
Renée Smith-Maddox
Clinical Professor of Social Work and Diversity Liaison, USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work
Renée Smith-Maddox is a clinical professor and diversity liaison for the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. She is also the chair of the school’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee. She teaches online and on-ground courses in the Master of Social Work and Doctorate of Social Work programs. At the university level, she has chaired the Provost’s Diversity and Inclusion Council, led the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) strategic planning process for 23 academic units, and co-chaired the Academic Senate’s Campus Climate Committee. Since 2017, she has co-chaired USC’s DEI Awareness Week, a professional learning series that provides 100 sessions focusing on a range of DEI-related topics to the USC community.
As a social work educator and mentor, Dr. Smith-Maddox prepares her students to be advocates for and designers of social change. In the classroom, she creates a learning community that teaches students how to assess, analyze, and evaluate policies, practices, and programs. This learning environment also serves as a social innovation lab for students to prototype and test their ideas for solving our most complex social issues. Prior to her appointment at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, Smith-Maddox held faculty positions at the USC Rossier School of Education and the University of California Los Angeles, Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. Her experience as an education analyst with the New York City Board of Education, a teacher researcher with inquiry-based research projects in K-12 schools, and executive director of youth development and college access programs laid the foundation for her work on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.