Dr. Anita Plummer (Ph.D. ’12) is the newest executive director of Howard University’s Center for Women, Gender, and Global Leadership (CWGGL), and she’s made it her mission to continue the center’s commitment to developing the next generation of Black women and Black feminist conscience leaders in the U.S. and globally. 

The CWGGL, established in 2020, is the first and only interdisciplinary research center focused on gender issues that Black women in leadership face. The hub works to bring positive social change on gender issues through scholarship, research, discussion, and service. The center’s work is grounded in its core values of resilience, integrity, service, and excellence. With programs such as the CWGGL’s annual International Women’s Day celebration, the Mothers of the Mecca initiative, and the HeForShe campaign, the center works to advance gender equality while amplifying Black women in leadership and gender-based scholarship in academia.  

“We’ve brought women leaders together who are deans, department chairs, and faculty members alike to talk about their experiences in leadership,” said Plummer. “Creating this community has been extremely important in terms of the sustainability of women here at Howard. The center, however, is open for all members of our community: faculty, staff, and students. We’re here for everyone and the center exists to serve the community. We’re ensuring that everyone’s voices are heard and their issues are amplified, while also ensuring that women’s research and gender-based research is amplified.”

An Expert in Sino-African Relations

Plummer’s continuing to build on the foundational groundwork laid by the CWGGL’s founding director Dr. J. Jarpa Dawuni and her predecessor Dr. Cassandra Veney. She took the helm as the center’s executive director in October 2025 after initially joining the CWGGL as its associate director of research and faculty engagement in 2022.  

For Plummer, she’s always known the value of women-centered spaces and the significance of women’s empowerment. Plummer, a Baltimore native, went to an all-girls high school where she learned the importance of championing women’s voices. During her high school education, she studied the Mandarin language, an experience that would later inform her future research interests. After receiving her bachelor’s degree from Goucher College and later a Ph.D. in African Studies from Howard, Plummer taught at Spellman College before joining Howard’s faculty ranks and the CWGGL’s leadership team. 

Plummer’s work at the CWGGL is informed by her activism roots. 

“I approached this position as an activist-scholar,” said Plummer. “I think that’s what’s great about the Women’s Center. A lot of the women who are engaged don’t necessarily work on gender issues. We are a very wide umbrella. My work today runs parallel to that, always reconciling social justice and the need to improve the condition of all communities, not just here in the United States, but also abroad. I tend to bring that to my work here at the center.”

Plummer’s research largely focuses on the African political economy. Her area of specialization includes investigating African foreign policies toward China and Chinese investments in Africa (known as Sino-African relations.) Her interest in Sino-African relations stemmed from her first visit to Kigali, Rwanda in 2004 when she learned of the Chinese-built roads throughout the African continent. 

“I was riding along Lake Kivu in Rwanda on beautifully paved, brand new roads,” Plummer recalled of the trip. “There are a lot of stereotypes are that Africa has poor infrastructure, but this infrastructure was amazing. A colleague from Rwanda looked at me and said the Chinese paved these streets. That's where my research started and where the spark was lit in terms of looking at South-South cooperation. I began to explore how nations in the global South are engaging economically, politically, and culturally.”

That research culminated into Plummer’s recent book “Kenya’s Engagement with China: Discourse, Power, and Agency” (Michigan State University Press, 2023). The book investigates the tension between official Kenyan and Chinese state narratives and individual Kenyans’ reactions to China’s presence, providing insight into how everyday Kenyans exercise their political agency and change.

Women in Tech and AI

Plummer’s current research examines Chinese digital investments in African infrastructures and how women specifically engage in digital spaces to better understand current shifts in digital ecosystems. 

“Women in Africa are at the forefront of engaging in what ethical AI looks like and what ethical access to digital spaces look like,” Plummer explained. “Theoretically and practically speaking, looking at the rapid changes in our digital spaces is important, but I think Black women’s perspectives in understanding that and contributing to it provides a historic, contemporary, and a holistic lens to see how people are impacted on the grassroots level by AI, tech, and digital investments.”

To this end, Plummer and the CWGGL team are launching an initiative that takes a deeper look into Black women in technology, and how women are impacted by changes to the workforce due to the rise in AI. The center’s 2026 International Women’s Day celebration, happening Mar. 27, will include its featured discussion event “Toward Just Digital Futures: Women Reconfiguring Power in the Age of AI.” The discussion will explore how different forms of AI are reshaping power, rights, and accountability. The event will include Dr. Lucretia Williams, senior research scientist at Howard’s Human-Centered AI Center, and Renée Cummings, assistant professor and the Data Activist in Residence at the University of Virginia. The discussion will be moderated by Dr. Talitha Washington, executive director of Howard’s Center for Applied Data Science and Analytics. 

“Black women have been historically more impacted by massive shifts in the workforce in terms of layoff than any other group. However, in terms of Black communities and communities of color, we’re engaged in the workforce at higher rates than any other marginalized community, including white women,” Plummer noted. “Anytime there are major shifts in the economy, Black women tend to be impacted the most. At the CWGGL, we’re looking at how shifts in digital technologies are impacting that now and how that will impact women in the future.”

With this year’s International Women’s Day event, Plummer explained that the center’s team is “thinking about how to prepare women, especially our graduates, who are going to be competing with AI for jobs. How can we prepare them to be ready and prepared to have AI as co-workers? We see this is a multi-year project that’s going to impact multiple communities.”