$5 Million Grant Awarded to Hire More Diverse Staff At Cornell Weill Medical School

As we continue the national discussion on the importance of diversity, many colleges are seeing just how vital it is to have a diverse staff. And this is true for companies and organizations across the board. Here at GrantWatch, we’ve seen many grants awarded towards this goal. And we know that philanthropist and foundations are especially focused on increasing workforce diversity.

One example is Bloomberg Philanthropies which awarded $100 million in grants to help fund medical students attending historically Black medical schools. In addition, Mackenzie Scott, formerly Mackenzie Bezos, awarded $4 billion in grant funds to efforts focused on social justice. Now, a $5 million grant will go towards hiring more diverse staff members at Cornell Weill Medical School.

Hiring More Diverse Staff Members Will Help Improve Student and Staff Experience

In general, students and staff benefit from a more diverse staff. For Cornell Weill Medical School, this $5 million award will help launch some very innovative programs. The focus of these programs is to build and keep a more diverse staff. In addition, the wider goal is to build mentorship and diversity and inclusion initiatives at the school.

Some of these programs include:

• Development of a mentoring curriculum.
• Establishing a faculty diversity incentive program.
• Competitive career development awards for junior faculty from populations under-represented in medicine.
• Increasing the number of faculty from under-represented minorities, including women and people of color.

Dr. Augustine M.K. Choi, the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medicine spoke on this grant award:

“At Weill Cornell Medicine, we have established diversity and mentorship as chief priorities and fundamental pillars of our institution’s mission, developing numerous, robust initiatives geared toward increasing representation and nurturing talent in medicine.”

“We are profoundly grateful to MasterCard for this generous grant, which will enable us to further cultivate generations of exemplary healthcare leaders whose diverse backgrounds and experiences will serve to advance patient care and medical research.”
— Dr. Augustine M.K. Choi

This initiative will include these four programs:

• First is the MasterCard Pilot Grant Program: This program will provide up to two years of competitive funding to under-represented minority faculty for promising research projects. The program will fund five faculty members for five years, with a focus on assistant professorships.
• Second, is the MasterCard Research Assistance for Primary Parents Program.
• Third is the MasterCard Faculty Diversity Incentive Program.
• And, fourth is the MasterCard Mentoring Program.

Grants to Help Diversity, Education and Social Justice Efforts

At GrantWatch, we offer dozens of grant categories for many areas of need and interest. These include a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) grants category, a Social Justice grants category, and an Education grants category.

There’s also a subscription available for GrantWatch, which unlocks features to help narrow your search through a keyword function. In addition, our customer service team is ready to answer questions on these grants and any others. Just call (561) 249-4129 to connect with a team member.