Marcia Parker, Ed.D. '20, is a higher education practitioner and scholar with a particular focus on health professions education. Raised in the rural southeastern United States, Marcia’s 14-year career in higher education spans the course of four states including Tennessee, Florida, Texas, and California. Her emphasis on health professions education stems from increasingly responsible roles as Recruiter for a nursing school, Assistant Director of Admissions for a health-science focused university and Founding Director and later Assistant Dean of Admissions for a pharmacy school. Most recently, she has served in a community engagement role, hosting health-professions career exposure summits for community college students. Marcia’s scholarly work represents the intersection of her professional and personal identities. Specifically, her research investigates access and equity in health professions education with an emphasis on the experiences of Black women in these settings. Her dissertation was grounded in qualitative methodology and she is an advocate for utilizing this form of research to amplify the voices of and provide a safe space for students, staff, and faculty from marginalized communities. Marcia’s dissertation, “Learning from their Journey: Black Women in Graduate Health Professions Education,” examined the pre-and post matriculation experiences of Black women who had been admitted to or graduated from an advanced health professions program.