Speaker

Alaysia Black Hackett is the Chief Diversity and Equity Officer in the Office of the Secretary at the United States Department of Labor. Appointed in the summer of 2022, she leads and provides strategic insight for the Department’s internal and external initiatives for interagency diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) programs. She serves as the principal advisor and subject matter expert on promoting DEIA into 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.   

Prior to joining the Department of Labor, Chief Hackett provided executive-level diversity leadership in both the public and private sectors, and she dedicated her career to effectively building diverse and equitable infrastructures. She served as the inaugural Deputy Chief Diversity Officer, a cabinet level role, to Governor Ralph S. Northam in the Commonwealth of Virginia. In this historic position, she managed the overall operations of the Governor’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) office.  Most notably, she co-created the ONE Virginia plan, a DEI strategic plan for inclusive excellence across 100+ state agencies in Virginia, working with leaders to champion the most robust equity agenda in Virginia.  Before her gubernatorial appointment, Chief Hackett served as the DEI consultant for the Virginia Department of Human Resource Management where she oversaw the reviewing and removal of bias policies and inequitable hiring practices and was an Equal Employment Opportunity investigator. Prior to her tenure in government, Chief Hackett spent 18 years in administration and diversity officer roles in higher education, including: University of North Carolina-Asheville (a state institution), Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College (a large community college), Virginia Union University (a historically black college/university), and Mars Hill University (a private institution), where she established the diversity office and advocated for inclusive excellence.

Chief Hackett 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 improve access to historically marginalized communities.  Those efforts led 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.

Hackett earned a Bachelor of Science in Sociology with a concentration in Race, Ethnicity, and Gender Relations and has a master’s degree in Public Affairs with a concentration in Organizational Development from Western Carolina University. She received her Juris Doctor from Concord Law School.