In her role as Director of Equity and Inclusion for at Children’s Minnesota, Keisha Powell
focuses on creating and inclusive and equitable environment for patients, families, and
employees within the seventh largest pediatric health system in the United States. During
the past 20 years, Keisha has worked in a variety of Human Resources roles within several
leading health systems.

In Keisha’s current role, her responsibilities include overseeing diversity sourcing strategies,
diversity training for leaders and employees, the hospital’s employee resource groups,
community partnerships, as well as data and analytics to ensure her team is making steady
progress toward its goals. For example, Keisha leads and oversees the supplier diversity
standards for the hospital system, including working toward a 2023 goal to increase supplier
diversity by six percent.

Keisha is an internal champion for building trust and understanding between Children’s staff
and patients and families through efforts to help ensure strong intercultural competence,
Keisha’s team has administered the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) to more than
500 children’s employees. In addition, Keisha leads an inclusive leadership cohort program
to elevate the intercultural competence of senior leaders. Keisha and her team also lead
bias de-escalation training, where clinical staff participate in real-world simulations to
mitigate biases in their daily approach to patient care.

Keisha’s leadership of talent sourcing strategies led to exceeding the hospital’s 2022
diverse hiring goal by three percent, for a total of 37 percent diverse hires in a state where
people of color make up approximately 20 percent of the population (2020 U.S. Census).
The sourcing strategies are working; during first quarter of 2023, 44 percent of new hires
were people of color.

Keisha has a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from the University of Minnesota. She
currently serves on the board of the QUEERSPACE collective, an organization that
provides mentoring support for LGBTQ youth. Keisha is a co-chair of the Employment
Opportunity Pillar within the Minnesota Business Coalition for Racial Equity (MBCRE),
which is a coalition created to focus on driving positive economic outcomes for black

Minnesotans and founded after the murder of George Floyd. She lives in Minneapolis and
enjoys reading and writing poetry.

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Find her on LinkedIn!
 

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