In this conversation, Dr. Carten—who presented the 2025 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Health Equity Lecture on January 22—explores diversity, equity, and inclusion in health care, reflects on her career, and reminisces about meeting with “Look at Larner” students.
2025 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Health Equity Lecturer Carla Carten, Ph.D., senior vice president and chief diversity and inclusion officer at the University of Vermont Health Network
Each January, the Larner College of Medicine Office of Inclusive Excellence at the University of Vermont invites distinguished leaders in health and medicine to share their expertise and insights at the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Health Equity Lecture. This lecture series honors the legacy of Dr. King by fostering discussions on the systemic barriers that contribute to health disparities and exploring actionable solutions to promote health equity.
The 2025 speaker, Carla Carten, Ph.D., senior vice president and chief diversity and inclusion officer at the University of Vermont Health Network, centered her presentation on “DEI Why and the Why Not: Using the Present DEI Tangle to Reimagine and Advance Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Health Care.” We sat down with Dr. Carten to explore this topic, reflect on her career journey, and reminisce on her experience meeting with medical and pre-medical students at the Larner College of Medicine last October for “Look at Larner.”
"How do we engage people across cultural differences and build relationships of trust, honesty, and collaboration for agreed-upon outcomes?" — Carla Carten, Ph.D.
What has been your professional path?
I started my career in sales and marketing with Proctor & Gamble (P&G) in Cincinnati in the 1980s. The turnover rate then was 18 months for white women, and for black women it was seven months. I had some wonderful experiences, but also some very challenging experiences, and I came to understand what professional allyship looks like.
After five years, P&G invited me to help develop the company’s diversity recruitment efforts. I said yes because I wanted the organization to be successful, and for more people like me to stay and grow their careers. I came to understand that I needed more training. P&G supported me in pursuing a master’s degree in organizational development at Case Western University.
In that program, I focused on projects in change management and matrix development, which involves bringing various workstreams together under one umbrella while valuing differences in people and perspectives, including diverse race and gender backgrounds. I used these skills to develop P&G’s strategic plan for diversity, equity, and inclusion in recruitment. When it came time to present the plan, the board of directors thanked me and said it was a good plan, but they would not implement it. That was a heavy experience for me.
Meanwhile, Case Western invited me into their doctoral program. I thought they were kidding! I said, “People like me don’t get Ph.D.s.” So, they gave me an assignment to stand in front of a mirror and ask myself: What prejudices did I hold against myself to make me think I am not fit for a doctoral program? I did this, and it was a remarkable experience. I realized that most of my life’s experiences were motivated by what people told me I couldn’t do: In my youth I had been a baseball umpire, competitive swimmer, and water ballerina. I did these things because people told me that either girls, or Black people, couldn’t do them, and I had to prove them wrong. Now, someone was telling me I can do something. I took their invitation.
I told P&G I needed to step away for two years to do the coursework for a Ph.D., and then I would return, perhaps to work in another department. I had been at P&G for 12 years, and my manager was supportive of my decision. However, P&G’s chief diversity officer, who was a white man, said “No. You can’t go to another department, because we own you.” And that was my exit from P&G.
For my Ph.D. I participated in research on organizational behavior with emphasis on emotional intelligence, generative thinking, and appreciative inquiry. I had the great fortune to be involved in an international study building equitable cross-cultural relationships for U.S. Agency for International Development–funded partnerships. This was the basis of my dissertation and my operating principles as I have moved forward in my career: How do we engage people across cultural differences and build relationships of trust, honesty, and collaboration for agreed-upon outcomes?
How did you to become a diversity officer for a health network?
In 2004, I became an assistant professor of diversity management at Cleveland State University within the psychology department which, at that time, offered the nation’s only master’s degree in this field. The program afforded me one day a week for consulting with the Cleveland Clinic, where I created their first office of diversity and inclusion, which led to a full-time position at Cleveland Clinic.
As I began to raise my family, my youngest child (of two children) was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. He needed my attention, and so I transitioned from my full-time post at Cleveland Clinic to do consulting work for them and for the University of South Florida (USF). I developed a five-year strategic plan for diversity, equity, and inclusion for USF’s College of Nursing.
In 2017, I accepted a position as Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Inclusion at the medical school at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) and Chief Diversity Officer for UMass Memorial Health System. I thought I would stay there until I retired, but I was recruited by Mass General Brigham, which was in the process of integrating 16 community hospitals to become a health network. Because of my background, they recruited me to help create a network that supported each individual hospital in keeping its cultural identity, create a network identity, and help create a more diverse, culturally competent, and inclusive workforce.
This is what thrills me and brings energy to my work in diversity and inclusion: Collaborating strategically at the interpersonal, group, systems, and organizational levels to bring different cultures together, maintaining the best of everyone’s cultural identities while supporting them with operational effectiveness under one umbrella. This has been my life’s work, and it is what brought me to the University of Vermont Health Network in 2024.
“The journey to equity is ongoing. We must continue to challenge injustice, support one another and work together to create a brighter future. We are stronger together.” — Carla Carten, Ph.D.
What have been some of your most interesting professional experiences in this field?
My experience at Mass General Brigham was amazing. I started on January 31, 2020, and the way the COVID pandemic unfolded shed a light on the health disparities that people had been talking about for decades. We had heat maps showing the disproportionate impact of COVID on communities of color, and they were identical to the maps for redlining [the practice that prevented people of color from accessing financial and social services, a widespread practice in the U.S. from the 1930s to the1960s]. Now for the first time, all the work in health equity that so many people had been studying and advocating for became visually apparent. It was like having a magic window!
Everyone across the nation could see disproportionate health outcomes in Black, brown, and isolated communities. This was our window of opportunity to eliminate systemic racism and racialized medicine in hospital systems. At Mass General Bigham, we examined community access, employee pay, and policies that served as barriers to equitable access to health care.
And then, the murder of George Floyd opened the window into a big door through which people could see the lived experiences in the Black community. We had an opportunity to have these conversations not just on a personal level, but on institutional and societal levels. I was in a health care system that wanted to take a bold stance on racialized medicine. In six months, we created a very specific, operationally viable strategy that had accountabilities in place for patient care and community health. We developed education, language access, vendor supplier diversity, and institutionalized practices for diverse recruiting. We did amazing work and received national recognition.
What do you enjoy about living and working in Vermont?
Vermont is the “brave little state,” with a long history of making national impact on policy and behavior. Vermonters value diversity, and they take time to listen to each other. I am an African American woman, married to an Iranian man, with a 22-year-old son who is not very verbal and sometimes walks up to strangers and makes sounds. I have been in many places where I have been made to feel uncomfortable, yet that has not been my experience in Vermont. People here have been kind, welcoming, and generous.
At the UVM Health Network, I enjoy working for an organization that is demonstrably committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, no matter the outside political climate, and that values belonging and wellness, including the psychological safety of its workers. And the cherry on top for me, is valuing kindness as a competency.
Audience members listening to Dr. Carten’s presentation during the health equity lecture
For the Health Equity Lecture, you presented on “DEI Why and the Why Not - Using the Present DEI Tangle to Reimagine and Advance DEI in Health Care.” What does this mean, and why did you select this topic?
The presentation provided an opportunity to reflect on why this work is so important, and to recognize how language evolves over time. We are in a moment where there are specific strategies in place to dismantle best practices in diversity, equity, and inclusion. It is happening in corporate organizations and higher education. Diversity officers in health care are grappling with the language, and it is evolving.
At this moment, UVM Health Network still uses the words diversity, equity, and inclusion, and for some community members, those words are held with pride. The work needs to continue, but we are under threat. We need to develop strategies to keep the work going, to create cultural impact and behavior changes where people feel seen, heard, respected and valued, with the purpose of improving health outcomes for all patients and employees.
“By coming together, we can stay strong in our resolve to move forward the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion for everyone.” — Carla Carten, Ph.D.
Last October, you spoke to premedical students at “Look at Larner,” an event for aspiring medical students from populations underrepresented in the profession of medicine. What was your intention and how was the experience for you?
It was wonderful to meet with students and tell them about the journey of diversity, equity, and inclusion in health care. Part of the experience was to expose participants to different professions in health care, so I explained what a chief diversity officer does and why the work is important.
I did an activity showing slides of diverse people and I asked the students to think about their immediate reactions. When you see someone, your brain has an instant response, automatically creating a story for that person. If you are in a health care profession, how you adjust to that response will influence your decisions about how to care for that person. Without training in unconscious bias, you really can’t be highly effective in health care delivery. This exercise created opportunities for learners to present through storytelling, engage in interesting conversations, and build community.
UVM Health Network President and Chief Executive Officer Sunny Eappen, M.D., M.B.A., and Lewis First, M.D., M.S., chair of pediatrics at the University of Vermont and chief of pediatrics at UVM Children’s Hospital, listening to Dr. Carten’s presentation
What do you envision for diversity, equity, and inclusion in health care over the next four years?
For the UVM Health Network and the Larner College of Medicine, I envision staying committed to the community and being very strategic in our work. I see opportunities to come together in a wellness space to share stories, concerns, and experiences, so that we don’t become embittered or burn out. By coming together, we can stay strong in our resolve to move forward the work of diversity, equity and inclusion for everyone.
I think the reason there is a crack in the armor of diversity, equity, and inclusion is because not everyone sees themselves in the equation. White men who are older, rural, and cisgendered need to see themselves in the diversity, equity, and inclusion equation, and that needs to be part of our work.
Left to right: Margaret Tandoh, M.D., associate dean for inclusive excellence, Carla Carten, Ph.D., and Larner Dean Richard L. Page, M.D. (Photo: David Seaver)That is inclusive excellence.