Class of 2023 Commencement Speaker

Attorney Lezli Baskerville is a Biden-Harris appointee to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Black Americans. She is the CEO of the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education, the membership/ advocacy association of the richly diverse HBCUs and PBIs, including Medgar Evers College, a founding member of NAFEO.

Baskerville is a founding investor and General Counsel of ECRID, a new credit bureau founded by former NFL touchdown leader and financier Cleveland Gary. ECRID offers second chances for its credit report holders to demonstrate creditworthiness, fully participate in commerce and secure myriad loans including those for education and mortgages. Baskerville is an Honors graduate of Howard University School of Law and its EEO Litigation Clinic, is a constitutional justice lawyer and a Howard University School of Law Lifetime Achiever. She is also an Honors graduate of Douglass College/Rutgers University and a Douglass Society inductee, in recognition of her work improving the quality of life of vulnerable populations.

A Harvard University Advanced Leadership Fellow, Baskerville served in the Education Group/Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; was a NAACP Legislative Counsel; National Black Leadership Roundtable Chief; served as a DC Administrative Appeals Judge; and senior executive staff for members and committees of Congress. Baskerville directed 34 political campaigns, designed and directed public policy campaigns, and wrote articles in or edited 40 public policy documents credited with shaping public opinion on state, national and global policy.

She was recognized by the Higher Education Leadership Foundation as “Woman of the Year in 2022,” by Kushan and Hurley in, InnovateHERs, as model ActivatHer; by STEMConnector as one of “100 Women Leaders in STEM;” by AOL Black Voices as one of the nation’s “Top 10 Black Women in Higher Education;” and in The History Makers as a distinguished Lawmaker. She is an original signatory to the. U.S.-Brazil Joint Action Plan to Eliminate Racial and Ethnic Discrimination and Promote Equality (JAPER), and of African Renaissance & Diaspora Network (ARDN).