Meet Dr. Monique Liston, Founder at UBUNTU Research & Evaluation | Career Paths for PhDs

Office Hours: Career Paths for PhDs

Office Hours: Career Pathways for PhDs is dedicated to helping people with doctorates explore careers from academia to industry!
Host/Show Creator: Dr. Jasmin M. Goodman
Co-Creator & Executive Producer: Dr. Maryann Kwakwa
Want to share your PhD story? Email [e-mail]
About Our Guest:
dr. monique inez liston is the Founder, Chief Strategist and Joyful Militant at
UBUNTU Research and Evaluation. UBUNTU Research and Evaluation was
founded by dr. monique liston as a space to hold her dissertation research
findings while protecting Black women’s intellectual thought, leadership
and vision. UBUNTU is a Bantu term that loosely translates into English, “I
am because we are.” UBUNTU was chosen because it is a word that
represents the core principle of UBUNTU as an organization while
connecting us as members of the globally displaced African diaspora.
Protecting the dignity of all Black people with Black women and femmes at
the lead is UBUNTU’s priority. UBUNTU was founded on January 1, 2017, Dr.
John Henrik Clarke’s 102nd birthday, intentionally chosen to memorialize
our intellectual genealogy within pan-African consciousness.
She is a Black woman born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She is the
daughter of Ursula, granddaughter of Gracie J. and great-granddaughter of
Inez. OKWUI ENWEZOR said "A collective has to be more than an ideal, and
more than communal craft; it has to be a truly social enterprise." UBUNTU
started because monique needed a place to build beloved community not
just income. She seeks teams. She loves collaboration. Building UBUNTU
meant making a Black Collective. Being raised by a conscious-raising Black
mother, educated at Howard University and loved by a family in blood and
spirit in Milwaukee -- a space birthed from monique naturally emanated
into a Black collective. UBUNTU is a space where teams dream, challenge
and build on shared values of transformation for liberation. Where one
thrives, we all thrive. Where one struggles, we all practice radical empathy.
The space is wrapped in joy and resistance. Previous spaces have not
fulfilled this purpose and while UBUNTU is not THE answer - it is the current
iteration of our collective journey towards liberation. UBUNTU provides the
space for emergent strategies to develop and flourish.
She is an experienced facilitator, evaluator and program designer with over
15 years of experience in the fields of leadership, education, and public
health. She is proud alum of Howard University with a BA in Sociology and
the University of Delaware with a Masters in Public Administration. Most
recently, UBUNTU was nominated as Best Place to Work for Social Justice
by Shepherd Express Magazine in 2020 and 2021 and was selected as a
winner for the Milwaukee Business Journal's Diversity in Business Awards in
2022.