Veronica Womack

RURAL EQUITY RESEARCH ADVISOR (RERA) FOR ASPEN CSG

Dr. Veronica L. Womack has spent nearly 20 years in higher education as a political scientist, rural researcher and Black Belt Region supporter. She currently serves as executive director of Georgia College & State University’s Rural Studies Institute in Milledgeville. Previously, she served as the institution’s chief diversity officer and professor of political science and public administration. Focusing her work on the underdeveloped rural South, Womack has brought local to global attention to underserved communities while also bringing inclusive excellence to the classroom. She constantly connects her academic research and coursework to several community-university-governmental initiatives in the Black Belt Region of the American South.

Today, she concentrates most of her work on issues within the Black Belt Region, including agricultural and farm bill policy with a deep-rooted interest in regional poverty and rural economic development. Her research is such a significant, riveting topic, it has garnered an international audience with a working group of experts at the United Nations; published in the Harvard Journal of African-American Public Policy; and secured federal funding for further examination of public policy in the rural South. Womack joined the faculty of Georgia College’s Department of Government and Sociology in the fall of 2002. She became coordinator of the university’s Master of Public Administration program and taught both undergraduate and graduate students. She currently works within university administration and serves as full professor of political science and public administration.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in public relations, master’s degree in public administration and doctorate in political science from the University of Alabama.