Kimberly Jacob Arriola Dean of the Laney Graduate School and Vice Provost for Graduate Affairs

Kimberly Jacob Arriola serves as dean of Laney Graduate School, vice provost for graduate affairs, and Charles Howard Candler Professor of Behavioral, Social, and Health Education Sciences in Rollins School of Public Health. 

As vice provost, Arriola is responsible for developing and implementing an aligned and integrated vision for graduate and professional education across the university in collaboration with key constituents. This entails enhancing the student experience across all graduate and professional schools; fostering the recruitment, retention, and successful matriculation of students from historically underrepresented groups; and expanding interdisciplinary graduate and professional education across all relevant schools at Emory.

As dean of Laney Graduate School, Arriola seeks to strengthen the graduate student experience and Emory’s ability to attract the best graduate students. This entails ensuring a student-centered educational experience that leverages curricular innovation to prepare students across all disciplines for careers that carry the greatest societal impact. As a result of significant investments and strategic decisions in the past decade, Laney has become a major player in the national and international graduate education landscape for the ways that it supports students and faculty. By focusing the school on interdisciplinary study, professional development, career planning and diversity, and inclusive excellence, Arriola solidifies Laney’s role as an important driver of Emory’s overall institutional trajectory.

Arriola serves as the chief academic, administrative, and fiscal officer of Laney Graduate School. Working collaboratively with critical constituencies, she supports the university’s academic mission through the creation of new programs, facilitates the establishment of processes and procedures to assist all graduate programs, and identifies and develops synergies between graduate education and research across the enterprise.

Career Milestones

• Chairs the Healthcare and Health Disparities Study Section of the National Institutes of Health (2020–2022)
• Associate editor of the American Journal of Transplantation (2021–2022)
• Oversaw the reaccreditation of Rollins School of Public Health, which received the highest possible score on all criteria (2018–2020)
• Led the Rollins School of Public Health strategic planning process (2017)
• Emory Williams Distinguished Teaching Award (2014)
• Leads the development, implementation, and evaluation of culturally sensitive interventions to improve public commitment to organ and tissue donation among African Americans, as well as interventions that improve access to transplantation among African American end-stage renal disease patients
• Maintains a program of federally funded research that focuses on the social and behavioral factors impacting the health of marginalized populations and communities of color, including the role of race-related stress in chronic kidney disease progression among African Americans

Education

BA, Spelman College 
MA, Northeastern University
PhD, Northeastern University
MPH, Emory University