Lenneal Henderson, Ph.D. is currently Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and Eminent Scholar at Virginia State University, Petersburg, Virginia. He was appointed to the Board of Virginia Humanities in 2016 and reappointed by Governor Northam in 2018.

Dr. Henderson has worked in the U.S. Department of Energy, the Social Security Administration and the U.S. Department of State. He has Chaired the Boards of the Greater Baltimore Urban League and the Maryland Humanities Council and is currently on the Board of LifeNet Health, Inc., a global tissue bank, organ procurement agency and regenerative medicine research center.

Along with 33 other Public Policy and Public Administration professors, he was intensively trained in Disaster and Emergency Management at the Federal Emergency Management Academy in Emmitsburg, Maryland focusing on human-induced, natural and health disaster events and crises, including the H1N1, SARS, Ebola, and HIV pandemics.

He is also an actor who has portrayed Thurgood Marshall (“Thurgood is Coming”), A. Philip Randolph, W.E.B. DuBois, Cab Calloway, Frederick Douglass and Howard Thurman.

Dr. Henderson was a Kellogg National Fellow and a Ford Foundation, National Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and the International City Management Association. He received his A.B., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. He currently lives in Claremont, Virginia.