LaChaun J. Banks, MBA

LaChaun J. Banks is a seasoned professional in economic development, strategic planning, and merging private enterprise with government and academia for overall shared prosperity.  She is currently the first ever Director for Equity and Inclusion, a joint appointment between Harvard’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative.  Her role with the Ash Center will involve working on the practices, policies and networks needed to diversify the community, inform the center’s organizational culture and resource allocation, and help move the Ash Center toward shared values, understanding, and language around diversity, equity and inclusion in their work and in the center’s community.

LaChaun’s role with the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative will manage the deployment and adoption of the newly launched City Leader Guide for Equitable Economic Development. The guide, which LaChaun co-authored, helps city leaders assess and better understand their current practices and state with respect to equitable development, and provides analytic tools to lead improvement by asking the right questions, looking at the right data, and considering promising practices in other cities.

Before this role, LaChaun was the Associate Director for Practitioner Communities with the Ash Center’s Innovations in Government Program.  She managed a network of the 45 largest cities and urban markets in the United States.  In this role she worked with senior municipal officers, including Mayors, Chiefs of Staff, Chief Innovation Officers, Chief Equity Officers, Chief Data Officers and others.  LaChaun initiated, analyzed and disseminated critical research relevant to policy issues facing cities, while providing them with tools and resources to combat those challenges.  During her tenure at Harvard, she has provided expert support in cities efforts to create new programming around homelessness, 5G technology, politics in the media, and equitable economic development.  Banks is a frequent guest lecturer, ensuring that her research and practitioner work are shared throughout the academic community.  She has guest lectured at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke’s Executive Leadership Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Extension School, Ohio University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, among others.

Before joining the Harvard Kennedy School, Banks led a multi-state program focused on economic inclusion and development based at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise.  As Associate Director of NCGrowth, she worked with public, private, and philanthropic leaders in economically distressed communities across North Carolina and South Carolina, to strengthen their economies.  Within 5 years Banks tripled the program’s capacity to take on new communities as clients, while creating new tools and measurements of impact.  To scale this work, Banks assembled, coordinated, and managed a network of advanced undergraduate and graduate level students from multiple universities charged with critical analyses and specialized research to support these under-resourced government clients.  With expansion of the program, she created and facilitated a statewide advisory board composed of expert leaders and university faculty to further expand its reach.  To support the program, she was responsible for managing multimillion-dollar budgets comprised of federal, state and philanthropic investments.  During her tenure, Banks doubled the program’s initial funding, ultimately creating two signature initiatives focused on entrepreneurial and economic development in rural communities.

In addition to her extensive background working in equitable economic development, LaChaun has broad business experience.  She possesses over a decade of experience in human resources, customer relations, advanced business planning, and business operations including time as a commercialization manager for a domestic aerospace company and a consultant for internationally-based high-growth technology start-ups (Copenhagen, Denmark).

LaChaun earned a BA in International Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with a concentration in global economics, trade, and development.  She later earned her MBA from UNC-Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School.  In addition, LaChaun studied at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, studying Asian business and management, and Chinese government and politics.