Charlae Davis

Dr. Charlae Monique Davis was born and raised in Kalamazoo, the child of Kalamazoo Public Schools educators Vern and Auga Davis.

After graduating from Kalamazoo Central High School, Charlae attended the University of Michigan and earned her B.A. with concentrations on Race, Class and Gender Inequalities and Social Welfare. She continued at the University of Michigan and earned her Masters of Social Work with a focus on Children, Youth & Families, Interpersonal Counseling and Community Organizing. While there she also worked as a Minority Peer Advisor supporting Students of Color, cultural awareness, education and retention. She received her Ph.D. in Educational Policy from Michigan State University, where her dissertation was a phenomenological study that investigated diminishing the racial academic achievement gap. She has received an impressive list of awards for her work, including effective community organizing on issues of inequity.

She has taught both at the University of Michigan and Michigan State University; a first-year seminar and a Human Diversity, Power and Opportunity in Social Institutions course in the Teacher Education Program respectively. She also has worked as an academic counselor at the University of Michigan with the Comprehensive Studies Program. While in Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Charlae founded a mentorship program for African American Youth. A true community effort was set into motion, one that included parents, clergy, congregations, college students and the Samaritan Community Development Corporation (Dr. Charles Hawthorne): The Youth with Purpose Mentorship Program. Charlae is a member of the Metropolitan Kalamazoo Branch NAACP and Northside Ministerial Alliance and is a Board Member of the Group Violence Intervention.

Dr. Charlae Davis currently works as the Executive Director of Interfaith Strategy for Advocacy & Action in the Community (ISAAC), a faith based non-profit community organizing network made up of 31 member Congregations/Organizations. She is also a Kalamazoo Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Racial Healing Practitioner.