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Kola Akindele, JD |
Kola Akindele, JD, has been promoted to serve as assistant vice chancellor for city and community relations in the Office of Community and Government Relations at UMass Medical School, according to an announcement from Chancellor Michael F. Collins. Akindele will lead the medical school’s efforts and relationships with city leaders, community partners and key stakeholders across the region.
“Since the medical school’s founding as the commonwealth’s first and only public academic health sciences university, our collective commitment to the communities in which we live and work—particularly the city of Worcester and the central Massachusetts region—has been inextricable from our mission to advance the health and well-being of people everywhere,” Chancellor Collins said. “For this reason, it gives me great pleasure to announce Kola’s promotion to this newly expanded role.”
Since 2015, Akindele has served as senior director for community and government relations at UMass Medical School, in which he has, among other things, led the medical school’s North Quadrant Support Services initiative in partnership with the Worcester Public Schools. Through the NQSS, the medical school aims to address some of the barriers to learning by providing access to food pantries, backpacks stocked with school supplies, laundry facilities for students and mini-grants to teachers. Akindele previously worked at Hartford Healthcare. He earned a bachelor’s degree from UMass Boston, a master’s degree from UMass Lowell, a law degree from Northeastern University, and currently serves on the Board of the United Way of Central Massachusetts.
James Leary, JD, recently left his role as vice chancellor for community and government relations at UMMS to join the health system as UMass Memorial Health Care’s vice president of government and community relations. Collins said the search process for the new vice chancellor for community and government relations has generated a great deal of interest from impressive candidates, from which he will announce Leary’s successor when he or she is selected.
