Deitre Epps is the CEO and Founder of RACE for Equity, LLC.
Deitre has worked for over twenty years to address the ill effects of poverty on low income communities. She provided direct services to Baltimore City’s children and their families for over a decade as an educator and program director for infants to 8th grade students and as a professor at Baltimore City Community College. She also taught early childhood education courses at Towson State University. She was previously the founding director of the Baltimore School Readiness Initiative, a city-wide effort which contributed to an increase in kindergarten readiness from 27% to 58% over four years using the Results-Based Accountability (RBA) framework.
Deitre provided coaching and results based facilitation for the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Leadership in Action Program, a results-based leadership program designed to equip local leaders to produce measurable results. Following these experiences, Deitre joined Results Leadership Group (now Clear Impact, LLC) as a Partner and Senior Consultant. In this role, she provided consulting services nationally and internationally to support mid to high level leaders to work collaboratively to understand and address the story behind the disparities in local data on child, adult and community well-being. She has extensive experience working with community leaders and funders who seek to implement culturally appropriate strategies in low-income communities, and with people of color.
Deitre has led the development of numerous results-based plans, supporting the application of program and community accountability to achieve measurable results. During these processes, diverse, cross-sector leaders are guided through the application of RBA as a data-driven decision-making framework. She provided coaching, training, results based facilitation and technical assistance to senior management and professional staff on local community outcomes, performance accountability and improvement.
Deitre also teaches and facilitates in leadership programs for public and nonprofit leaders, including the National Institutes of Health Senior Leadership Program; the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Leadership Lab; the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Leadership Development Program; and the Maryland-National Capital Parks and Planning Commission Transformational Leadership Program. She has also taught at CDC University for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the University of Maryland School of Public Policy.
Deitre is the author of “Achieving Collective Impact with Results-Based Accountability,” a white paper on the intersection of RBA and Collective Impact. She is regularly asked to speak and provide training sessions at conferences and seminars around the world.
Committed to cultural proficiency, she works to facilitate effective cross-cultural interactions, supporting individuals, agencies, systems and communities to work collaboratively in an increasingly diverse world. She provides leaders with tools to create effective policies and practices. Deitre was a volunteer for more than a decade for the People to People Student Ambassadors program, a long-standing leadership program focused on increasing global competence in youth by immersing them in new cultures, where she designed curriculum and led cross-cultural groups on visits to Australia, New Zealand, China and a number of European countries.
In 2018 Deitre launched Race for Equity, a consulting firm whose mission is to provide support for leaders who are struggling to engage their organizational staff and/or community stakeholders in the development of results-based strategies and actions that have measurable outcomes and that advance equity.
Deitre holds a bachelor’s of science degree in microbiology and a master’s of science degree in human services administration. She resides in Cary, NC.
She may be reached at deitre@race4equity.com