Matthew Griffith is a 4th year Ph.D. candidate at UCLA in Higher Education and Organizational Change. His research interest centers on diversity leaders, institutional politics, and how power and agency function in organizations. For example, his dissertation will study chief diversity officers’ networks to reveal institutional power dynamics and issues with agency within their organization. More broadly, my research seeks to explore and improve the efficacy of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policy, implementation, and strategy.
Prior to pursuing his doctorate, Matthew worked as an administrator in the University of California system. Most recently, he served as the Manager for Strategic Diversity Initiatives at the UC Office of the President, where he led systemwide efforts to improve campus-based diversity, equity, and inclusion issues and developed external, strategic partnerships in order to further diversify and build opportunity pathways for UC faculty, staff, and students.
Beyond his diversity work, Matthew has remained committed to engaged scholarship and teaching. Most notably, during his UCLA tenure, he was the lead graduate researcher and coordinator for the UCLA Prison Education Program, where he worked with UCLA students and currently incarcerated students on research and legislative projects to increase access to higher education for incarcerated individuals. Currently, he teaches the 195CE Community Engagement and Social Change course through UCLA’s Center for Community Engagement– an upper division, experiential learning undergraduate course.
Born and raised in the city of Detroit, Michigan, he is a proud and sometimes overzealous graduate of Detroit Public Schools and the University of Michigan.
