Kennesaw State president Kathy Schwaig has added Sonia Toson to her cabinet as Chief Diversity Officer, effective Feb. 15.
Toson has previously served as the Interim Vice President of Diverse and Inclusive Excellence at KSU before her time as Director of Diversity Relations for the Michael J. Coles College of Business.
Toson is also a tenured associate professor of law in the School of Accountancy, where she teaches Legal Environment of Business, Negotiation Theory, Strategy, and Practice and Employment Law. She began teaching at the former Southern Polytechnic State University campus in 2008. Five years later, she became an associate professor of law.
“We celebrate the wealth of diverse excellence that exists in our community and engage each other with respect as fellow humans,” Toson said in her Chief Diversity Officer welcome message. “It is our ultimate mission to leverage diverse excellence to produce transformational innovation and impact.”
Toson now chairs the Presidential Task Force of Race Reporting at KSU. The committee, originally commissioned by then-President Pamela Whitten and then-Provost Kathy Schwaig, aims to “…address collectively the racial challenges and opportunities for change that are present at Kennesaw State University,” according to the PTFOR website.
Toson’s personal website, regarding her career as an educator, says she works to educate at “…the intersection between the law and corporate social responsibility, social entrepreneurship and sustainability, social responsibility in sports, and the pedagogical aspects of legal studies.”
On ResearchGate, Toson has seven published works. The most recent study was published in May 2022 and titled “Going High in a World of Lows: A Theoretical Study of Black Women Leaders in Higher Education,” written alongside Dequies Lanier of Troy University and J. Celeste Walley-Jean.
Toson is a member of groups such as the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, the University System of Georgia Chief Diversity Officer Working Group, the Georgia Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council and the Georgia Association of Women in Higher Education, according to a KSU press release.
She is also listed as the board secretary of Common Good Atlanta, an organization that works to provide access to higher education to incarcerated or formerly incarcerated persons in Georgia.
Her educational background includes a Juris Doctorate from American University Washington College of Law, and MBA from American University’s Kogod School of Business and a Bachelor of Arts in East Asian Languages and Culture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, according to KSU.
More recently, Toson’s name was among three that signed off a statement from the university this month condemning “acts of violence or racism” on campus following a racially-motivated attack on KSU student Jalique Rosemond by KSU students Kole Reasoner and Gauge Stanley.
Toson can be contacted at stoson@kennesaw.edu or 470-578-2614.
