Yulanda McCarty-Harris

Dr. Yulanda L. McCarty-Harris, J.D., is an accomplished and dedicated senior leader and attorney who has 21 years in the public/private sector, including 15 years in higher education.

McCarty-Harris serves as the Director of Culture, Employee Engagement and DEIB in the Texas Development Office working in Talent Development. She has served as a senior leader on three different college campuses, including her service at the University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin) as Director of Missional Critical Initiatives in the Institute on Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault (Steve Hicks School of Social Work); Executive Director for Organizational Culture and Inclusion and Executive Director for the Office of Inclusion and Equity within the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement.

McCarty-Harris received her Doctor of Education at UT-Austin and is the first African American to graduate from the Executive Ed.D. in Higher Education Leadership Program. She is also a licensed attorney in Texas and Ohio and received her undergraduate degree from UT-Austin and her Juris Doctorate from Southern Methodist University School of Law in Dallas, Texas.

Prior to coming to UT, she spent 18 years in Ohio serving in various leadership positions. She served as the Director for the Office for Institutional Equity at Cleveland State University and was also the university's Title IX Coordinator. She was also the Director of Equal Opportunity and Diversity at Youngstown State University and was a director and senior employment lawyer for the City of Toledo. She is an affiliate practitioner for the nationally acclaimed program, Courageous Conversations about Race, an award-winning protocol for effectively engaging, sustaining, and deepening interracial dialogue, and has a Diversity and Inclusion for HR Certification (Cornell University). She also served as the First Vice President for the American Association for Access, Equity and Diversity (AMAED), the oldest operating association of professionals in the equal opportunity/affirmative action profession (aaaed.org).

She is the wife of John Harris, an award-winning journalist, whose debut book, From Gold Teeth to Gold Jacket: My Life in Football and Business highlights the career of Pro Football Hall of Famer Edgerrin James, one of the greatest running backs of his generation. She and John have two sons, Myles and Langston, and share a daughter, Courtney (Adam) Rose Dantus - parents of our only granddaughter, Sydney Rose.