Speakers

DAY ONE OPENING KEYNOTE

As DHS chief equity officer, Dr. Karen McKinney is working to make the Minnesota Department of Human Services an anti-racist institution. Before joining DHS, she spent 24 years at Bethel University as a professor in the Biblical & Theology Studies Department. For the last five years she also served as the community liaison to communities of color for the university’s Office of Diversity. Prior to that, she held a variety of positions in youth ministry, health care and education and served as a consultant on anti-racism, equity and diversity.

DAY ONE AFTERNOON PLENARY

Dr. Tura was appointed assistant commissioner for the Health Equity Bureau in March 2023 by Commissioner Dr. Brooke Cunningham. As assistant commissioner, Dr. Tura oversees the department’s Center for Health Equity; diversity, equity and inclusion efforts; and the Office of American Indian Health. He will also serve as the department’s lead for proactive and strategic health equity partnerships and will lead the department’s work to advance equity in its day-to-day services and programs.

DAY TWO OPENING KEYNOTE

Dr. Hardeman, a reproductive health equity researcher, applies the tools of population health science and health services research to elucidate a critical and complex determinant of health inequity—Structural Racism. Dr. Hardeman leverages the frameworks of critical race theory and Reproductive Justice to inform her equity-centered work, aiming to build the empirical evidence of racism’s impact on health.

DAY TWO CLOSING KEYNOTE

The Theater of Public Policy is the country’s favorite (and coincidentally only) civics-inspired improv comedy company.