Amber Townsend

DEI Administrative Lead, Northwestern's Lurie Cancer Center

Amber was recently appointed as the inaugural Manager of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine’s Cancer Center. In this role, Amber works in partnership with leaders at the highest level to develop a long-term DEI strategy and support the broad spectrum of DEI initiatives of the Cancer Center and its members across all campuses. Amber’s areas of focus include new program development, development of funding opportunities, and development of initiatives targeted at advocacy and influencing public policy as it affects cancer disparities, diversity, equity, and inclusion.  

Prior to her role at Northwestern, Amber served as the inaugural Manager of the Talent, Learning, Equity & Inclusion department at Chicago Scholars, a seven-year program focused on providing resources and support to help academically ambitious, first-generation college students from under-resourced communities in Chicago navigate the complex transitions into college, through college, and beyond to a meaningful career. 

In this role, Amber’s work focused on researching, developing and managing the implementation of best practices related to educating and training staff and key stakeholders through a lens of Racial Justice, Equity, Accessibility, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion working in collaboration with the Human Resources department to manage internal processes related to the employee life cycle and DEI-related practices and policies. 

Amber received her undergraduate degree in Educational Studies from Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut. During her time at Trinity, Amber worked in the Office of Admissions, the Office of Multicultural Affairs and the Career Development Center providing research-backed recommendations for changes to their programs, policies that helped these offices better support students from marginalized backgrounds. She also led the schools very first multi-stakeholder demonstration on behalf of marginalized students. 

During her senior year, Amber served as a policy analyst at Open Communities Alliance (OCA), a civil rights non-profit in Connecticut that works to create and support policies to end housing discrimination. There, Amber worked at the state level to remove discriminatory housing policies and implement new, equitable policies.  Once she graduated from Trinity College, Amber worked in partnership with Reverend Jesse Jackson’s Senior advisor to direct the Rainbow PUSH Coalition’s PUSH Excel Education Program. 

Amber was also a featured speaker at the Onsite Leadership forum 2020 where she shared her love of navigating difficult conversations through her discussion entitled “Making Space to Talk about “It”. Amber is currently an Emerging Leader within Chicago’s Society for Human Resource Management, and an alumna of the Posse and Chicago Scholars leadership development programs.