About Us
Mission Statement
The Diversity Pledge Institute will solve the diversity pipeline problem by improving retention rates associated with diversity, equity and inclusion; and supporting journalists’ career growth.
Vision Statement
The Diversity Pledge Institute will create inclusive environments while diversifying the workforce and providing journalists with the skills they need to elevate their careers.
Our Team
Larry Graham
Founder and CEO
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Larry Graham is the founder and executive director of The Diversity Pledge Institute. He spent the majority of his career leading sports journalists in newsrooms across the country. He’s worked at ESPN.com, The San Diego Union-Tribune, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and The Kansas City Star, to name a few. Most recently, he served as deputy director of local news transformation at the American Press Institute where he built the Table Stakes website. Larry is on the board of directors for the APSE Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to fostering diversity in sports departments. He’s also a NewStart fellowship recipient studying Media Solutions and Innovation at West Virginia University’s Reed College of Media.
Jane Elizabeth
Senior advisor
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Jane is a longtime journalist who has worked in newsrooms including The Washington Post, The Pittsburgh-Post Gazette and The Virginian-Pilot; and most recently was managing editor of The (Raleigh, N.C.) News & Observer and The (Durham, N.C.) Herald-Sun. She also was director of accountability journalism at The American Press Institute. Board memberships include The Freedom Forum’s Power Shift Project, Radford University’s College of Humanities and Behavioral Sciences, and The North Carolina Press Association. She holds a master’s degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and is a former Knight-Nieman visiting fellow at Harvard University.
Maya Srikrishnan
Program Manager
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Maya Srikrishnan is a veteran journalist with over a decade of experience in the industry. Her work has appeared in the Center for Public Integrity, Voice of San Diego and the Los Angeles Times. At Voice of San Diego, Maya helped launch San Diego 101, a civic education initiative aimed at helping residents understand the role of local government in their lives. She also served as co-director for the 2020-2021 Asian American Journalists Association Voices program, a journalism training fellowship for college and graduate students. Maya was raised in New York and studied history at the University of Texas in Austin. She has a master’s in international affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and was a fellow at the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia’s Journalism School. Maya also served in the Peace Corps in Panama, where she taught English and trained Panamanian teachers.
Douglas K. Smith
Senior consultant
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Doug Smith created the principles and methods for performance-driven change that have been used to foster results and new capabilities in enterprises across more than 60 industries. Doug is the architect of the Media Transformation Challenge, the premier news transformation program in the world as well as the Table Stakes programs that have helped hundreds of local journalism groups find sturdier paths toward 21st century journalistic and economic sustainability in the US and Europe.
Our Board of Directors
Erica Henry
Chair
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Erica Henry is an experienced news executive who spent 25 years at CNN, where she was most recently the Vice President, News for CNN/U.S. In this role, she oversaw management of the Newsgathering Southeast regional team of field producers and talent who under her leadership covered some of the most significant and historical moments of the 20th and 21st centuries.
In the spring of 2024, Henry was asked to become a member of the Board of Directors for the Georgia First Amendment Foundation. In addition to that, she also serves at Board Chair for the Diversity Pledge Institute and is also a Co-Chair for Atlanta’s Chapter of the Duke Alumni Association.
Henry, resides in Atlanta and is the proud mom of three.
Alena Allen
Officer
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Alena Allen began her service as dean of the LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center on July 1, 2023.
Allen, who also serves as a professor of law, previously served as deputy director for the Association of American Law Schools and as a professor of law at the University of Arkansas School of Law.
Allen’s scholarship focuses on health policy and tort law, and it has been published in the North Carolina Law Review, Fordham Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, BYU Law Review, and Cardozo Law Review. She was named an American Society of Medicine, Law, and Ethics Health Scholar at the Center for Health Law Studies, St. Louis University School of Law.
Prior to joining LSU, Allen served as interim dean and professor of law at the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville. She also served as associate dean for research and faculty development. Allen began her academic career at the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, where she was awarded Professor of Year in 2013, the Farris Bobango Faculty Scholarship Award in 2019, and the MLK 50 Faculty Service Award in 2021. In addition to serving as an associate professor of law, she also served as director of diversity, director of research, and was elected to serve in the faculty senate. Allen taught courses in torts, health law, and family law.
Allen earned her bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, from Loyola University New Orleans. She is a graduate of the Yale Law School, where she was the articles editor of the Yale Journal of Regulation. She served as a law clerk for Judge Samuel H. Mays, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, and Judge Paulette J. Delk, U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Tennessee. Allen also previously worked as an associate in the healthcare group at Arnold & Porter’s Washington D.C. office, and in the employee benefits group at Baker Botts in Houston.
Katherine Graham
Officer
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Katherine has more than 20 years of experience in the energy industry supporting technology for businesses in the wholesale, retail, and environmental/sustainability arenas. Prior to coming to Priority Power, Katherine served as Executive Vice President of Technology at Shell Energy (previously MP2 Energy).
Katherine joined Shell Energy in 2018 to prepare the company for growth across all its retail business lines. She spent the last four years creating a highly scalable, automated, and digital retail business. This included evaluating and implementing technology projects for billing, pricing, forecasting, risk management, data platforms, asset management, CRM tools, customer portals, and operational automation. Katherine started her career in energy on the front lines managing generation assets in ERCOT for Aquila, a deregulated utility. She then spent 15 years in Silicon Valley working at APX developing software for wholesale scheduling, settlements, and environmental REC and carbon offset registries. Katherine thrives on understanding the business first and foremost so that all technology strategies align and propel a business forward.
Tim Wong
Officer
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Tim Wong is a product and design leader, now helping to build the metaverse as Director of Product Design, Growth at Roblox. Previously, he built teams, scaled businesses and defined organizational, cultural best practices on his tour through some of Silicon Valley’s giants at Netflix and Facebook (now Meta).
Before jumping into big tech, Wong cut his teeth as a Creative Director and Editor for American City Business Journals and The Baltimore Sun, eventually championing product innovation, business development and design investment as a D-level executive at Gannett and the Washington Post. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a B.A. in journalism and government/politics.
