The ‘Sisters and the Bro'
President Johnnetta Cole assembles new Bennett College team
By Allison Foreman

GREENSBORO, N.C.

Dr. Tatia Granger remembers the moment like it was yesterday. It was June 6, 2002. The special assistant to the vice president for financial services was sitting at her desk at Duke University when the phone rang.

"When I picked up the phone, this voice on the other end said, ‘Dr. Granger, this is Johnnetta Cole calling from Atlanta.' "

"I almost dropped the phone," Granger says.

This was not just Dr. Johnnetta Cole, Bennett College's newly appointed president, calling. This was Johnnetta Cole, former president of Spelman College. This was Johnnetta Cole, anthropologist and nationally known educator.

And this was Johnnetta Cole, who Granger had written about at the University of Virginia 10 years ago for a paper on Bennett and Spelman — the only two historically Black colleges for women in the country.

"I remember telling my professor, Dr. Cole is the kind of person I'd really like to work with one day," Granger says.

Now, as Granger speaks from her new office as vice president of enrollment management at Bennett, she said her longtime dream has come true.

Granger is one of the many new administrators Cole has recruited to be a part of her team at Bennett College. They have come from diverse but deep academic backgrounds, ranging from private research schools like Duke to HBCUs like Clark Atlanta University. Still, all of them have a similar goal in mind — to work with a woman they admire and make Bennett College the best it can be.

"They could be other places," Cole said from her office. "They have chosen to be at Bennett."

While many in the Greensboro community have called her the "savior" at Bennett, Cole insists she is not a one-woman team. She just has the sense to choose people who are as good as her or better at their respective jobs, she said.