Barbee Myers Oakes, Ph.D. has more than 30 years of experience in higher education. She was appointed the Chief Diversity Officer at the University of Nevada Las Vegas in September 2017. Previously, Oakes was the inaugural Chief Diversity Officer and Assistant Provost for Diversity and Inclusion at Wake Forest University from 2009-2017 where she was the architect of the university’s first strategic plan for diversity and inclusion. From 1995-2009 Oakes was the director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs at Wake Forest. Under her leadership, Wake Forest was awarded a Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award by Insight into Diversity in 2012. In 2012 Oakes was also named by Diverse Issues in Higher Education Magazine as one of “25 Women Making A Difference” in higher education. Oakes earned her Bachelor of Science and Master of Arts degrees from Wake Forest. Upon completion of her PhD in Exercise Science and Nutrition from the University in Tennessee, Knoxville, she became the first Black woman with a doctoral degree in the American College of Sports Medicine. Oakes held faculty appointments at Wake Forest, Arizona State University, and Penn State University from 1985-1995 and is the co-author of seven textbooks. 

A leader at TIAA for 13 years and also a native Detroiter, Corie Pauling became the organization’s Senior Vice President, Chief Inclusion & Diversity Officer in July 2018.  Corie was instrumental in the launch of the D&I function at TIAA over ten years ago and served as a primary legal and business advisor and thought leader in this area since that time.  In her prior role, Corie held the position of Senior Director, Associate General Counsel in the Employment, Benefits & Labor Law Group, in which she provided counseling, training, risk assessment and other support to TIAA’s executives, its prior CDIOs and other Human Resources leaders and also business managers on a broad range of workforce issues, and she also managed employment litigation nationally.  In the D&I space, she has extensive experience in strategy development, board interface, equal employment opportunity best practices, policy development, training/learning, metrics, data analysis and reporting, external partnerships and sourcing, pay equity, global workforce compliance, talent acquisition, workforce development, employee resource groups, culture surveys, federal contractor compliance and workplace investigations.  She also now leads the enterprise’s nationwide and award-winning Corporate Social Responsibility function, which last year led over 650 community service projects through 15,000 employee volunteers.  Having partnered with nearly every area in the TIAA organization over her tenure, Corie also led the Culture Action Team for TIAA’s Advocacy & Oversight area from 2016 through 2018. 

A former shareholder with the international employment law firm Littler Mendelson, P.C. and also Ferguson Stein Chambers in Charlotte, Corie’s experience includes counseling financial services institutions and other Fortune 500 companies as well as representing individual employees in employment and civil rights litigation.  She has significant trial and appellate experience on civil rights matters.  Having presented before the American Bar Association, the National Bar Association, the North Carolina Bar Association, the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, the Practicing Law Institute, the Society of Human Resources Management and other organizations, Corie frequently speaks at programs on emerging employment law, diversity and inclusion developments.

An engaged civic leader and also a competitive 11-time marathoner, Corie was incredibly honored to be named on the list of 2019 Black Enterprise Most Powerful Women in Corporate Diversity and also to be recognized as a TIAA Working Mother of the Year in conjunction with the national magazine Working Mother and recipient of the Young Civic Leader Award by the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. She is a graduate of Charlotte’s groundbreaking Leadership Development Institute. Corie has also served on the Board of Governors of the North Carolina Bar Association (NCBA) and as chairperson of the NCBA’s 500-attorney Labor and Employment Law Section.  Among other leadership posts, she also served as a committee chair of the Board of Directors for the Levine Museum of the New South, a member of Charlotte’s Arts & Science Council Advisory Committee and a co-chair of the Mecklenburg County Bar’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee.  As also an avid “late bloomer” runner, she is thrilled to have run the Boston Marathon for the first time in 2018 and is training now to qualify for the 2020 running.