CEHD Alumni and DEI Leadership Manager explores culture and community as part of her journey

Nubia Bennett, 10’ 16’ was born and raised in the west end of Louisville, K.Y. Throughout her life she has been passionate about culture which has led her into various roles across the city.

Bennett earned a bachelor of arts in communications with a minor in Pan-African studies in 2010 and later earned a master of education in counseling and personnel services with a concentration in college student personnel. In 2022, Bennett joined Leadership Louisville as DEI & Leadership Program Manager. Leadership Louisville is a nationally recognized, non-profit organization that serves as the region’s hub for talent development, relationship building, and community engagement.

 Bennett reflects on her career and shares her thoughts on her role in the community in this Q&A interview.

Q: Why did you choose UofL for your degree?

Bennett: My stepdad, the late Dr. J. Blaine Hudson was a long-time faculty member and Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, so I grew up on this campus. When I graduated high school, I thought I wanted to be a culture writer for a Hip Hop magazine, so I majored in communications, however I was not in college long before I had my son. Being a student parent limited the ways I was able to be involved on campus. When I graduated, I realized college experiences like mine were much more common than I’d realized, and how college aptitude was only a fraction of the problem—capacity, and community support were the only way I’d made it. I went back to school to learn more about how lived experiences create pathways for some, and difficult barriers for others, and how to make it more equitable for all. I started my master’s in college student personnel part-time because I was a full-time working mom, but the “scenic route” to my master’s degree allowed me to concurrently audit my own experience as a non-traditional student during a time when colleges were learning how to better serve a quickly growing population of students just like me. Ironically, while I did not end up writing about culture in the published sense, I ended up doing a lot of the cultural analysis I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid. The root of my passion has and will always be examining culture and communities.

Q: Where has your career taken you since graduating?

Bennett: I am going to use names, because I believe we should give people their flowers often and remind them that you will never forget that they “saw” you when you needed them most, and it was their mentorship and advocacy that was the key to access. While I was earning my degree one of my internship supervisors, Dr. Katie Adamchik, recommended that I gain work experience beyond UofL, even before I finished my degree. I hadn’t been active in undergrad like most of my colleagues, and I’d only worked various customer service “jobs” and I felt like my limited higher education experience was a liability. I took her advice and landed an internship with Dr. Jason Merriweather at Indiana University Southeast (IUS) where I worked in enrollment management, mentoring, adult student services, and later earned a position in the Institute for Learning and Teaching Excellence. I moved on to Spalding University under the leadership of Dr. Mistalene Calleroz White as their first Student Success Coordinator. Those experiences gave me the confidence to not only see myself as a well-rounded higher education professional, but I was also able to transfer my skillset out of academia so I could help more people navigate larger systems.

I transitioned into Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer’s Office for Safe and Healthy Neighborhoods (OSHN), where I managed Louisville’s participation in National Youth Violence Prevention Week and the One Love Youth Implementation Team (what transitioned into the YES Youth Cabinet). There I was working with young leaders across the city to engage with the executive city leadership, and navigating our local political system is arguably just as complex as attempting to complete a college degree, so my work really had not changed much. 

I left there in February 2020 and like most young professionals, the pandemic helped me realize that I was overidentifying with my work, and the murder of Breonna Taylor reminded me that identity of being “good at what I do” didn’t mean everything either. I used lockdown to go into deep study to learn what it meant to feel good outside of any gold stars I’d received for a job well done, and I did art (photography and film), I read books, and got curious about the relationships other people subject to marginalization have with pleasure. This eventually led to a podcast I started Louisville Public Media (LPM) Podcast Incubator called Sprinkle Sparkle. The podcast focuses on the relationship of pleasure and marginalized identities like black women, queer people, etc. During that time, I was working at the University of Louisville in the Diversity and Equity Center with Marian Vasser, where I was part of a dedicated team of professionals, who are still doing the hard work of creating equitable, safe spaces on this campus for students, faculty staff and community, despite—and because of—the current climate and the obstacles that creates. All of these career pivot points have proven valuable as I transitioned into my role as the DEI and Leadership Development Manager at Leadership Louisville, because to lead a community leadership program, and curate experiences that encourage community trusteeship requires that I understand my own symbiotic relationship within the community that has brought me experiences, opportunities and people to get to this point, and create spaces for others to do the same as we all work to make this great city, better.

Q: Why is it important to have someone like yourself working in the Louisville community?

Bennett: We can all tell our story lots of ways and it is still (mostly) true. I think the only stories most people can identify with and learn something from are the ones where we highlight how others have helped make us better. Every time I think of something I’ve done well it’s always because I leaned in and leveraged the power of my community. The work that I am doing with Leadership Louisville and my podcast is a curation of these experiences. To be effective at leading leadership programs I must be immersed in my community—I am, because we are. I am really great at some things, and I do those things to the end of making it easier for others to do the things I don’t, so that is easier for others to do the things they don’t—all in the service of everyone. I think that is important because it’s the only way we thrive as a community.

Q: What advice would you share with current students?

Bennett: Trust the process. I thought that my experiences were a liability, but I soon realized that with good mentorship, and a lot of self-awareness, every person’s unique experience is an asset. I still don’t know what I want to be when “I grow up”, but every new experience is an opportunity to clarify what I love to do. The world is unpredictable. It will always be easier to know who you are than what is going to happen in the future.

Be willing to be vulnerable to ask for help. I know it sounds cliché, and much easier said than done, but it gets easier if you just do it, and also if you are observant enough to understand the people around you. The more aware you are of who is in your community, then you know who to ask for help, how to ask for help and ask for exactly what you need. Asking for help is not a one step process like people tend to think.

Follow Nubia Bennett on Instagram and Facebook.

Follow Leadership Louisville on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

 Listen to Sprinkle Sparkle at www.sprinklesparkle.org or wherever you stream podcasts.

If you’re interested in a MEd in Counseling & Personnel Services (College Student Personnel) click here for more information.

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