Reverend Dr. White-Hammond wears many hats: pediatrician, pastor, humanitarian, medical missionary - and Tufts graduate.
White-Hammond received her BS in biology from Boston University and went on to earn a Doctorate of Medicine from Tufts Medical School in 1976 and a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School.
White-Hammond is the co-pastor of Bethel AME Church in Boston and has been a pediatrician at the South End Community Health Center since 1981. She has also been heavily involved in local community service as well as global humanitarianism.
As the founder of, and consultant to, the church-based creative writing and mentoring ministry "Do The Write Thing," White-Hammond works with high-risk black adolescent females in Boston public schools, juvenile detention facilities, and at the Bethel AME Church. For the past three years, White-Hammond has been the co-convener of The Red Tent Group, along with Rabbi Elaine Zecher, bringing together Christian and Jewish women for a group Torah and Bible study.
Globally, White-Hammond has worked as a medical missionary in Botswana, the Ivory Coast, South Africa, and other African countries. She has made seven trips in the past five years to southern Sudan, where she works to obtain freedom for enslaved women and children. She co-founded My Sister's Keeper in 2002, a women's group to help women of the Sudan. White-Hammond is currently the national chairperson of the Million Voices for Darfur campaign and the Co-Chair of the Massachusetts Coalition to Save Darfur. In 2005, she traveled to Darfur to hear stories and learn from female genocide survivors in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps.
In addition to her community service and humanitarian work, White-Hammond serves on the Board of Trustees of Brigham and Women's Hospital, the Boston board of the American Anti-Slavery Group and the Board of Overseers for the recently-renamed Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service.
White-Hammond will be receiving an honorary doctorate of humane letters.
