Dr. McGowan-Robinson is a mother, educator, school founder and advocate for racial equity. She has focused her efforts on mentoring and retaining racially diverse school leaders through her work at the Diversity in Leadership Institute (DLI). McGowan-Robinson founded the organization to address the need for racially diverse and culturally responsive school leaders in California. DLI seeks to create policy and practice conditions for Black and Latinx educators to thrive in public education. Before serving as CEO at DLI, McGowan-Robinson served in various capacities as a non-profit executive in K-12 education policy advocacy and as founder and Executive Director of a middle school in South Los Angeles. A life-long educator, McGowan-Robinson began her teaching career as a Chicago Public Schools teacher before moving west and becoming a high school English teacher and literacy coach with the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Dr. McGowan-Robinson earned her Bachelor’s degree in English/Rhetoric from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a Master’s Degree in Instructional Leadership in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago and her doctorate in Educational Leadership for Social Justice from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.