Summary:
A Message from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Chief Operating Officer.
For me, it all started in the small town of Pacolet, South Carolina. With a population of around 2,000 and just two stop lights, I came from proud, but humble, beginnings. As a high school senior, I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to do, but I knew an education would enhance my chances of success. Ultimately, I wanted to be part of something bigger and make a difference without further burdening my family, who worked hard to provide my brother and me with a great, rural, childhood experience. Accordingly, I joined the Air Force and served on active duty for 5 years, which provided me both work experience and robust educational opportunities. This decision changed my life and proved to be the right choice for me!
After leaving the Air Force, I completed my education and chose a career in Federal civilian service, where I’ve proudly served for the last 33 years. This career choice allowed me to connect with many phenomenal people and make a difference in ways I never envisioned, including contributing to incredible missions in the Department of the Air Force, Department of Agriculture, Department of Treasury, and Department of Health and Human Services. I spent the first 18 years of my career as an Air Force civilian where the agency actively invested in my growth and development laying the foundation for the leader I am today. For the last 15 years, I’m thankful to have held executive-level positions within the U.S. Forest Service, the Food and Nutrition Service, and the Internal Revenue Service before being selected as Chief Operating Officer for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2021. During this journey, I went from being a beneficiary of food stamps as a child to providing SNAP (food stamps) policy oversight for the entire Southeastern United States. It was a full circle moment for me, helping families break the poverty cycle.
At CDC, I’m honored to be part of a leadership team driving transformative cultural change. Leveraging lessons learned from COVID-19, we launched CDC Moving Forward and are advancing our unified vision of One CDC. My focus has been, and continues to be, on our workforce -- the heartbeat of CDC. We employ diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging (DEIAB) principles to drive informed changes and achieve a culture of continuous learning and engagement, emphasizing a growth mindset supported by a holistic approach to talent development.
In April 2021, former CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky took a bold step by declaring racism a serious public health threat. This critical moment in our agency’s history set us on a positive trajectory toward achieving significant DEIAB milestones, committing the agency to focusing on the structural racism, discrimination, stigma, and disenfranchisement that drive inequities.
We pledged to establish a culture where employees can share equitably in the rewards and challenges as each contributes to achieving the organization’s goals. As an agency, we work to solve some of the world’s most daunting health challenges with fortitude and courage. We also face the internal challenges and opportunities DEIAB provides with similar equanimity by looking inward and pioneering effective programs and initiatives for our workforce.
We continuously strive to demonstrate our commitment to integrating DEIAB principles into every aspect of our organization and operations. We continue to leverage the HHS Memorandums of Understandings with Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI), Minority Serving Institutions (MSI) and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) to ensure we have a sustained, diverse pool of well-qualified candidates to fill vacant positions.
Our collaborative actions (leadership, unions, and workforce) have positioned us to create and support the workplace culture our employees want and deserve. Significant milestones for CDC include:
- Establishing DEIAB as foundational for the agency
- Developing CDC’s first enterprise-wide DEIA Strategic Action Plan with the input from our entire workforce, in addition to every Center/Institute/Organization (CIO) establishing individual action plans to institutionalize this work across CDC
- Teaming with the Partnership for Public Service and providing CIOs with a comprehensive action plan framework that incorporated a systematic approach in developing, tracking and monitoring progress to ensure a sustained and collective commitment towards DEIAB across the CDC
- Establishing CDC’s Office of Health Equity
- Developing the CDC DEIAB Maturity Model
"There is no end to this journey - only growth and change."
- Establishing and co-hosting an annual CORE Forum to promote and acknowledge the agency’s efforts to advance health and workplace equity
- Standing up the enterprise-wide talent management framework to include CareerReady which offers employees the opportunity for full development to be the best version of themselves
- Launching the agency’s Hiring Panel Generator to automate and standardize the process of creating diverse hiring panels and enhancing transparency in the hiring process
- This initiative provides all eligible employees with an opportunity to help fulfill CDC’s commitment to hiring a qualified, engaged workforce that reflects the diversity of our nation and the populations that we serve.
I’m proud of our accomplishments so far and understand we have more work to do to make meaningful and lasting progress towards equity for our workforce, who work tirelessly to protect health and improve lives globally. We are indeed – better together!
Robin D. Bailey, Jr.
Chief Operating Officer, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Health and Human Services
Continuing our DEIA journey
The DEIA journey is a continuous process of learning and improvement. Committing to DEIA is not just the right thing to do—it is the smart thing to do. It makes HHS a stronger federal agency, a more effective leader and partner in advancing the health of the nation, and an attractive home for the nation’s best and brightest talent.
Leadership change stories will evolve as we collaborate across HHS and make shared progress. We will move forward with a focus on continuous improvement and addressing existing and emerging leadership needs.
For questions, resources, or additional information, please email DEIAStrategicPlan@hhs.gov.
