One of two historically Black colleges for women, Spelman College in Atlanta named as its next president Dr. Helene Gayle, an epidemiologist and former Assistant Surgeon General who was a leading researching into HIV/AIDS, the Associated Press reports.
On June 30th, Gayle will succeed current president Mary Schmidt Campbell, who announced her retirement last year. Gayle will leave her position as the CEO of the Chicago Community Trust, the largest community organization in the United States.
With degrees from Columbia, Penn and Johns Hopkins, Gayle spent two decades working at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention working on issues of global health and infectious disease, later focusing on HIV/AIDS.
“Any woman who has the academic background and has the desire to have an education at Spelman ought to be able to do that, and ought to be able to do that without having to amass the kind of debt that is oftentimes crippling for somebody who’s starting out in their career,” Gayle said.