Johnny Taylor, a long-serving former executive with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and chair of the White House Presidential Advisory Board on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, resigned his position today.
In a letter to U.S. President Joseph Biden, Taylor emphasized that his four-year commitment to the board yielded great results under the Trump Administration and that the board would be well-served by new leadership.
“The strategies and initiatives my fellow PBA Board Members and I worked tirelessly on over the last four years have yielded remarkable results; in fact, many describe this era as an “HBCU Renaissance” as the institutions have become the choice of more students, more employers, and more philanthropists,” Taylor wrote.
Under Taylor’s leadership, the advisory board helped to guide several groundbreaking policies benefiting historically Black institutions, including forgiveness of more than $320 million of capital restoration loans granted to HBCUs impacted by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and more than $1.4 billion distributed in part through federal coronavirus recovery spending.
The board also lobbied for increased engagement between HBCUs and federal agencies, resulting in a dedicated official in each department responsible for connecting and reporting outcomes to the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Recent outcomes of this work include HBCU research and development programs headed by the Department of Defense, State Department, and Department of Agriculture.
Currently serving as president and CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management, Taylor left TMCF in 2017 after successfully raising hundreds of millions of dollars to support student scholarships and institutional capacity building at HBCUs.
“With the future looking much brighter for the HBCU Community than it did four years ago, I cannot think of a better time to allow a new leader to assume the role I now occupy so s/he can work with your administration to maintain the momentum,” he wrote.
