Dr. Robert Adams with Matt – January 19, 2026

Dr. Robert Adams is the Executive Director of the Penn Center on St. Helena Island near Beaufort, South Carolina.

Dr. Adams was born in Bangor, Maine, and raised in military institutions across the South (Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Texas). He earned an M.A. in sociology from the University of Florida and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin. Robert has worked extensively in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, Latin America, and North America.

Previously, Dr. Adams served as the Senior Vice President of Programs at the NEA Foundation in Washington, DC, overseeing the Foundation’s grantmaking programs. Dr. Adams has also worked as an Executive-on-Loan/Interim Chief Operating Officer at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, a Program Officer at the Fetzer Institute in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Associate Director of the Institute of African American Research at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Dr. Adams recently served as Co-Founder and Principal for Sargent Adams Consulting LLC. in Boston, MA. He provided strategic guidance on change management and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) for Fortune 500, government, labor, and nonprofit clients.

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