The Center for Policing Equity (CPE) announces the appointment of three new Board of Director members: Faye Wattleton, Monica Bell, PhD, JD, and Pastor Michael McBride. The board welcomes the new members this week as the organization gathers for its first Board Meeting of 2024.
“All three of our new Board Members bring necessary clarity to a field that has been mired in a sense of hopelessness since the retreat of promises made in the shadow of George Floyd’s lynching,” said Dr. Phillip Atiba Solomon, Co-founder and CEO of the Center for Policing Equity. “As CPE enters its sixteenth year, CPE’s focus on unlocking what we know is both possible and necessary requires that we are guided by the wisdom of those who can dream a different world alive. In their careers, Ms. Wattleton, Dr. Bell, and Pastor Mike all have made entire worlds of Black freedom possible that were impossible without them. Now, as we turn our attention to a year distracted from the ongoing erasure of Black life and strivings, we could not be more grateful to be welcoming these three extraordinary leaders to our team.”
Faye Wattleton is the co-founder and director of EeroQ Quantum Hardware Inc.—a quantum computing company. Ms. Wattleton also served as co-founder and president of the Center for the Advancement of Women, an independent, nonpartisan think tank conducting women-focused national research and policy advocacy. From 1978 to 1992, she was President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the nation’s oldest and largest voluntary reproductive health provider and advocate. She was the youngest, first woman, first African American, and longest-tenured in the position, leading the international organization to become the seventh largest non-profit institution. Ms. Wattleton was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993, and in 2014, she received the Ohio State University Alumni Medalist Award for national and international career distinction.
Monica Bell is an award-winning Professor of Law and Counselor to the Dean at Yale Law School, and an Associate Professor of Sociology at Yale University. Ms. Bell works at the intersection of law and sociology, using sociological theory and research to explore legal questions regarding race and class inequality. Ms. Bell’s research has appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, the Yale Law Journal, the Journal of Economic Perspectives, the NYU Law Review, the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, and other journals. She has also published writing in popular outlets such as Politico Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Inquest, and the Washington Post. She currently serves on the American Sociological Review and the Law & Society Review editorial boards.
Pastor Michael McBride is the executive director for LIVE FREE USA, a national organizing and social change network committed to ending the criminalization of people of color, reducing gun violence, and transforming policing and the criminal justice system. He was named by the Center for American Progress as a Top Clergy Leader in 2013 and served on President Obama’s Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships Council to address Poverty and Inequality in 2016. He is one of the national leaders in the movement to implement public health gun violence prevention programs, recently featured as one of CNN’s Champions of Change. He co-founded the Black Church PAC and the Black Brown Peace Consortium. Pastor McBride is the Lead Pastor of The Way Church in Berkeley, CA. He has been a frequent contributor to the New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN, the Huffington Post, and many other media outlets.