Dr. Kevin Ahmaad Jenkins
Inclusion programmes have lost their political cover and most of their internal credibility at the same time. Senior leaders need a way to talk about race, bias and equity that produces measurable change in how people are managed, served and clinically treated, without sliding into compliance theatre or political signalling. The question is no longer whether to engage, it is what an evidence-based version of this work actually looks like.
Kevin Ahmaad Jenkins is a University of Pennsylvania health-equity researcher who helps organisations turn inclusion from a values statement into a measurable operating discipline.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Kevin Ahmaad Jenkins
- He grounds inclusion work in peer-reviewed research on bias and clinical outcomes, not in opinion or training-industry frameworks, which gives senior teams a defensible footing when DEI is contested.
- The RETINA Framework, his own intervention model, gives healthcare and high-regulation organisations a structured way to address how bias affects decisions, processes and outcomes.
- His Penn lectureship in Medical Ethics and Health Policy means he can hold a room of clinicians, executives and policy leaders with equal credibility.
- He has worked across more than 35 hospital associations and health systems, so the material is tested against operational reality, not just conference audiences.
- His delivery is calibrated for high-stakes rooms where the topic is uncomfortable, which is where most inclusion conversations now sit.
Biography highlights
- Lecturer, Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania.
- Developed the Racism-Focused Trauma Informed Care (RETINA) Framework, used in patient-provider settings.
- Fellow, Veterans Health Administration Office of Minority Health.
- Member, National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Roundtable on Health Equity.
- National Minority Quality Forum 40 Under 40 Leader in Health, 2017.
- Robert Wood Johnson Foundation New Connections Award recipient.
Biography
Most inclusion content in circulation is built on values and training language, not on evidence about how bias actually shapes outcomes. That is the gap Jenkins’s work occupies. As a lecturer in Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, he studies how racism functions inside clinical processes, from algorithmic decisions to the quality of patient-provider interactions, and translates the findings into something organisations can act on.
The RETINA Framework, which he developed, is a patient-provider intervention that treats racism as a measurable variable in care delivery rather than a cultural sentiment. It has informed equity work across more than 35 hospital associations and health systems. His standing as a Fellow within the Veterans Health Administration’s Office of Minority Health and as a member of the National Academies’ Roundtable on Health Equity puts him inside the institutions that set the national agenda on this question.
For non-healthcare audiences, the value is the operating model. Jenkins treats inclusion the way a clinician treats a diagnostic problem: define the mechanism, measure the effect, intervene with something specific. That posture is recognisable to executives in banking, insurance and consumer-facing organisations that need an inclusion conversation grounded in evidence rather than in slogans. The National Minority Quality Forum named him a 40 Under 40 Leader in Health in 2017; the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation backed his early research through its New Connections Award.
What organisations get when they put him in front of a senior audience is a researcher who can hold the room on a topic most speakers reduce to platitudes. He is fluent in the politics of the current moment, but his authority is not political. It is built on what the data actually shows about how organisations include or exclude their people and customers.
Key speaking topics
- Inclusion as an operating discipline
- Bias in decision-making and clinical processes
- Health equity and the business of healthcare
- Inclusive management practice
- Culture change in high-regulation organisations
- Difficult conversations in the workplace
- Algorithmic bias and equity in service design
Ideal for
- CHROs and Chief Diversity Officers rebuilding inclusion strategy after political backlash.
- Healthcare boards, hospital association leadership, and clinical executives addressing equity in care delivery.
- Banking, insurance and consumer-services leadership teams needing an evidence-based inclusion conversation.
- Senior-team offsites and leadership development programmes where the brief is to raise the standard of internal dialogue on race and bias.
Audience outcomes
- A working definition of inclusion that can be operationalised inside an existing management system.
- A view of where bias sits inside specific organisational processes, not as an abstract cultural risk.
- Language and structure for conducting hard conversations on race without producing defensive responses.
- A clearer line between equity work that is defensible to a board and work that is performative.
- For healthcare audiences, exposure to the RETINA Framework and its application to patient-provider interactions.
Talks
A leadership-level session on what it takes to embed equity into the decisions a senior team actually makes.
Key takeaways:
- Where equity work commonly stalls in senior leadership teams
- How to assess whether current inclusion activity is changing decisions or only sentiment
- A practical sequence for moving from values statement to operating practice
A session on how to lead difficult conversations on race and bias without producing the standard defensive responses.
Key takeaways:
- Why most workplace dialogue on race fails on structure, not intent
- Techniques for holding the room when the subject becomes uncomfortable
- How leaders signal that the conversation is safe to enter without lowering the standard
A culture-level session on what it takes to integrate inclusion into the architecture of an organisation rather than its messaging.
Key takeaways:
- The gap between culture statements and the systems that actually shape behaviour
- Where DEI work tends to collapse into compliance, and how to avoid it
- Building inclusion into the operating cadence, not the comms calendar