Dr. Mirna Ramos-Diaz serves as the inaugural Chief Diversity Officer for Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences (PNWU). Dr. Ramos-Diaz also serves as an Associate Professor of Pediatrics in the Department of Family Medicine at PNWU.
Dr. Ramos-Diaz received her MD from the University of Miami School of Medicine, completed her pediatric residency at the University of Miami, Jackson Memorial Hospital, is Board Certified in Pediatrics, and received a master’s in religious studies from Gonzaga University. She worked as a pediatrician in the Yakima Valley, Washington, serving Native Americans and Hispanics in these communities for over eleven years. She is the co-founder for Roots to Wings, a transformative co-mentoring program whose purpose is to create an educational/mentoring pathway that enables Native American and Latinx Youth living on Native Homelands to become STEM and healthcare professionals. This program received the 2018 honor of semifinalist for “The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. She serves as Co-PI for the Summer Research Preparatory Yearlong Program (SRPYP) for Native American and Mexican Students in Washington State funded by the National Institute of Health.” Dr. Ramos-Diaz has been awarded multiple grants to support the Roots to Wings program, written book chapters, received the PNWU Presidential Service Award, and was a speaker with a TEDx presentation in 2016. She was a keynote speaker for the International Mentoring Association in 2019. In 2020, she was selected to receive the Magaret Rigg Outstanding Alumnus Award by her Alma mater, Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, Florida. The award is given to an alumnus who, as a professional, has distinguished herself through outstanding leadership in the workplace and community and who is working to make the world a better place through social justice endeavors. Her professional dictum: “Live where you serve and serve where you live,” has represented her calling to serve the underrepresented throughout her career.
She enjoys: spending time with her family (which includes her spouse, three Godchildren, seven canines, and other four-legged and two-legged companions); working on her family’s farm; training dogs for competition and pet therapy; photography; journaling; and hiking.