system’s diversity-management efforts earlier this year,
Perkins draws on his passion for education and his
experience in teaching and diversity management in
academia. He’s charged with identifying and
recruiting more Black, Latino and Asian
doctors out of medical school and creating
more diverse candidate slates for high-level positions within the hospital system.
“Diversity came along as a means to not only assist
those students but to assist society in general.”
From Education to Healthcare
Moving to healthcare from aca- demia, he says, was a natural progression. “My life has been
about helping to make a difference for
those that are underrepresented and
underserved and helping them to achieve
equal outcomes,” he says. “So there
is a clear stream—a thread—that runs
through all of this and the work that I do.”
At University Hospitals, Perkins stresses the
importance of observing and measuring outcomes
from diversity-management initiatives. It’s not
enough, he says, to set strategies without following
through and measuring the results. “What I learned
in my experiences in higher ed is that it’s
not enough to recruit and to retain. The
difference comes when you prepare stu-
dents for excellence both in the academic
arena and into their careers,” he says.
That same lesson applies to
healthcare. Perkins is first assessing
the hospital system’s recruitment
strategies and recruitment outcomes,
looking at where Black, Latino and Asian
candidates are succeeding in the process
and where they’re not and discovering
the reasons why.
Another possibility, Perkins says, is
establishing relationships with medi-
cal schools to reach Black, Latino and
Asian medical students very early in
their careers. “We want to provide qual-
ity, culturally competent patient care,”
he says. “A lot of the work we will do is
about building relationships that help us
recruit the talent that we need to provide
the level of excellent patient care that we
want to provide.”
He also encourages others in his
organization to develop ownership and
become champions for diversity and
inclusion. “There are no bystanders in diversity and
inclusion,” he says. “We all own and we all benefit
from this.” I
University
Hospitals
No. 5
in The DiversityInc
Top 5 Hospital
Systems
Higher Education
Perkins’ personal definition of diversity encompasses “our differences and similarities,
including characteristics that we see and don’t see,
language, life experience, thoughts, ideas that make us
who we are,” he says. “The power is how we leverage
it to meet the goals of our respective organizations and
meet our own aspirations.”
He came to that definition through his
formal and informal education. His family
moved to Connecticut from North Carolina
when he was young. He attended Danbury
High School, where he played basketball
and baseball and did well in his college-
preparatory courses. Perkins wanted to go
to college, but a white guidance counselor
suggested he become a mechanic. His par-
ents rejected the suggestion. “They were
products of a racial society in the South. At
the time we left, there were still signs for
‘colored’ and ‘white,’” Perkins says. “They
encouraged me to continue, to go on to col-
lege. That’s what I wanted to do and that’s
what they were there to help me do.”
He attended Central State University, a
historically Black university in Wilberforce,
Ohio, and earned a bachelor’s degree in
education science. He taught science,
math and physical education and coached
in Connecticut public schools, primarily
to Black and Latino students with back-
grounds similar to his. He watched as some
of his most talented students missed out on
opportunities.
“Students I saw were very talented and
really possessed the abilities to succeed but were not
given equal chances to succeed because of their socioeconomic standing and their race or gender,” he says.
TITLE
Vice President for
Diversity and Inclusion
BIRTHPLACE
Bethel, N.C.
EDUCATION
Bachelor’s degree from
Central State University
in Wilberforce, Ohio;
master’s degree from
Rensselaer at Hartford,
a branch of Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute in
Hartford, Conn.
PHILANTHROPY
Serves on the board
of Cleveland School of
Science and Medicine,
a high school that
introduces students to
health and medical-science professions
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