Alaysia Black Hackett

Appointed by President Joe Biden, reporting directly to the Secretary of Labor, Alaysia serves as the Department’s inaugural Chief Diversity and Equity Officer. Alaysia has oversight of both the Department’s internal in-reach and external outreach diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) initiatives to ensure the mission of empowering all workers morning, noon, and night.

In this role, Alaysia serves as the principal advisor and subject matter expert on normalizing the implementation of DEIA into the systems that guide the labor market, diversifying the workforce, dismantling historically exclusive systems that perpetuate discrimination in the workplace, and embedding equity in the labor field so that all people may feel seen, heard, and included.

Previously, Alaysia served as the inaugural Deputy Chief Diversity Officer to Governor Ralph S. Northam in the Commonwealth of Virginia. In this historic role, she managed the overall operations of the Governor’s DEI office. Most notably, she co-created the ONE Virginia Plan, a DEI strategic plan for inclusive excellence across 100+ state agencies in Virginia, along with working with leaders to champion the most robust equity agenda in Virginia, resulting in historical accomplishments. Before her gubernatorial appointment, Alaysia served as a DEI Consultant for the Virginia Dept of Human Resource Management, overseeing the review and removal of bias policies and inequitable hiring practices, and was an EEO investigator. Prior to her tenure in government, Alaysia spent 18 years in administration and diversity officer roles in institutes of higher learning, including the University of North Carolina-Asheville (a state institution), Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College (a large community college), Virginia Union University (a historical Black college/university), and Mars Hill University (a private institution) where she established the diversity office and advocated for inclusive excellence.

Alaysia received the 2020 Governor’s Diversity, Inclusion, and Outreach Award for leadership in prioritizing equity in the Commonwealth of Virginia’s COVID-19 pandemic response by helping to improve access to historically marginalized communities. Those efforts led to the multi-agency Unified Command response and recovery, which leveraged the Equity Leadership Taskforce to integrate equity into each decision made on behalf of the Commonwealth.