Dr. Valencia P. Walker serves as the Associate Chief Diversity and Health Equity Officer for Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Additionally, she holds joint appointments as Associate Division Chief of Health Equity and Inclusion for the Division of Neonatology and Vice Chair of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the Department of Pediatrics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. A practicing neonatologist, she champions the elimination of health inequities for pregnant people and their infants. In addition, she advocates for gender equity and speaks extensively throughout the country on intersectionality, microaggressions and anti-racist praxis in medicine/medical education, science, and engineering. As a faculty member, she frequently lectures to medical students on respiratory embryology, racialized inequities in healthcare and professional identity formation. She has also received multiple recognitions as an outstanding Problem-Based Learning facilitator.

A physician leader within organized medicine, Dr. Walker is a member of the Executive Committee for the AAP’s Section on Minority Health Equity and Inclusion, in addition to her current position as Program Chair for the Section. She is also the Central Region Representative for the AAMC Group on Diversity and Inclusion. Previously, she served as president for the Association of Black Women Physicians, a nonprofit organization dedicated to diversifying the physician workforce, advocating for under-resourced communities, and promoting health equity. Dr. Walker completed undergraduate studies at Florida A&M University and received her medical degree from Emory University School of Medicine. She finished a Pediatrics residency at UT Memphis and a Neonatology fellowship at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Prior to joining Nationwide Children’s Hospital, she served as an inaugural Assistant Dean of Equity and Diversity Inclusion for the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and obtained an MPH in Health Policy from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.