CONNECT . MOTIVATE . INSPIRE .
DR. JEWEL BRONAUGH: LEADING THE 1890 UNIVERSITIES FOUNDATION
BY YOLANDA McCUTCHEN
not only the work that we do as HBCUs. I loved the work because it was community-based work. I also loved the faculty and staff that I worked with at Virginia State University. I found it to be a very nurturing environment where people supported each other.” During her tenure at Virginia State, Dr. Bronaugh continuously exceled from a 4-H professional to becoming Dean of the College of Agriculture in 2011 and served in this capacity for four years. “An HBCU gave me an opportunity to become a leader. And I don’t know if there
would be any other university who would have invested in someone who started on the bottom floor of the extension building and have seen a leader, a future leader, with the potential to rise to a different level of greatness, even more so than I even thought that I could. But they gave me an opportunity and a platform to be successful and to be seen as a leader,” said Dr. Bronaugh. Others soon took notice of her leadership capabilities. Her career in agriculture bloomed further when in 2018, Dr. Bronaugh
was appointed by Virginia’s Governor Ralph Northam to serve as the 16th Commissioner of the Virigina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. In 2019, she served as the Virginia State Executive Director for the USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA). In 2021, the U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed President Joe Biden’s nomination of Dr. Bronaugh to serve as the 14th U.S. Deputy Secretary of Agriculture. She is the first Black woman to serve in this position.
D r. Jewel Bronaugh grew up being influenced by HBCU graduates and attending events on the campuses of St. Paul’s College and Norfolk State University, where her grandparents and parents all graduated. Dr. Bronaugh credits her first position at Viriginia State University’s College of Agriculture’s 4-H extension program with helping her to discover her career path, “almost immediately after I started that job, I found my niche. It just really created a passion in me and a love for
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