Neijma Celestine-Donnor, JD, MSW, LCSW-C is the Associate Dean for Equity, Inclusion and Strategic Initiatives at the University of Maryland Baltimore, School of Social Work. In her role, Neijma leads the school’s diversity and anti-oppression efforts and helps guide the achievement of a new standard for inclusive excellence. She also guides and supports the school’s strategic initiatives and serves as a key collaborator with the Dean of the School. As a member of the Dean’s leadership team, Neijma has a strategic position responsible for promoting and enabling an inclusive environment for faculty, students, and staff while championing organizational change. As a faculty member, she teaches employment discrimination law and is involved in scholarship, research and projects on improving equitable outcomes for students, faculty and staff. Her scholarship also focuses on the intersection of free speech and inclusion and she believes that Inclusion and free speech need each other. She has created several frameworks grounded in this belief, most notably the CASE framework which provides guidelines on how free speech and inclusion can harmoniously exist. Neijma is a proud graduate of University of Maryland’s School of Social Work and University of Baltimore School of Law.
