This month, ASA President Kathy Ensor focuses on leadership—specifically statisticians leading in the university environment—and interviews Monste Fuentes about how her role as a leading statistician helps her lead a university.

Math and science were always Adrian Coles’s favorite subjects growing up in a socioeconomically disadvantaged community in southern Virginia. After serving nine years in the US Marine Corps, he attended The University of North Carolina to become a high-school math teacher. However, he fell in love with statistics after he took a course his senior year and saw the wide range of real-world problems the discipline helped solve. Eventually, he earned his PhD in statistics from North Carolina State University and became the first African American male to earn the degree from the time-honored department.

Reneé Moore attended Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina—a small, historically Black, women’s college. She loved teaching and declared three majors: mathematics; secondary mathematics education; and psychology. One summer, she participated in the Harvard Summer Program in Biostatistics and the United Negro College Fund Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program, which set her on the path to becoming a biostatistician. Moore is currently a research professor at Drexel University; director of the Biostatistics Scientific Collaboration Center; and director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the department of epidemiology and biostatistics.

Ann began her government career at the US War Production Board during WWII. Early in her career, she also worked for the United States Navy and Air Force. She was one of the early “Government Girls,” a term coined during WWII when the federal government hired women to fill roles during a labor shortage. Not only was Ann a woman in the workforce during the 1940s and ’50s, she was also the first professional African American to work in several government agencies.

In celebration of Black History Month, we recognize the innovative mathematical statistician Annie T. Randall, along with 11 individuals from the Black/African American collective who have made tremendous contributions to the statistics field. The 12 featured individuals have achieved success as professors, researchers, volunteers, and health care professionals.