Dr. Chad Womack is the Senior Director of National STEM Programs and Initiatives. Prior to joining UNCF, Dr. Womack co-founded The America21 Project and DC Innovates, both innovation-based community and economic development nonprofit organizations dedicated to empowering metro-centers and underserved communities through STEM education, tech-entrepreneurship and access to capital. In addition, Dr. Womack led the White House-based HBCU Startup and Innovation Initiative, which resulted in the launch of the HBCU Innovation, Commercialization and Entrepreneurship initiative at UNCF.
At UNCF, Dr. Womack’s work portfolio includes the Fund II Foundation STEM Scholars Program—a $50 million and 10-year commitment to support 500 academically talented African American high school students pursuing STEM as majors in college and careers in the technology industry; the EE Just Life Sciences Institute, which includes the Bristol-Myers Squibb-sponsored EE Just Life Sciences Postgraduate Fellowship Program; the UNCF HBCU Innovation, Commercialization and Entrepreneurship (ICE) Initiative; the UNCF HBCU Innovation Summit and the HBCU Center of Excellence in Computing and Computer Science, which includes a partnership with Google.
Dr. Womack was previously a member of the U.S. Department of Commerce, Economic Development Agency, National Advisory Council for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the DC Mayor’s Innovation and Technology Inclusion Council. Dr. Womack completed several postdoctoral research fellowships at the National Institutes of Health in the National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Diseases Vaccine Research Center, and at the Harvard AIDS Institute and the Harvard School of Public Health in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases. Dr. Womack earned his doctoral degree in biomedical sciences from the Morehouse School of Medicine and is a proud graduate of Morehouse College where he majored in biology with minors in chemistry and applied physics.