Emerging Leader Award: Dr. Jamila Minga
Dr. Minga is the 2024 recipient of the Emerging Leader Award. This award recognizes exceptional achievements and significant contributions to a person’s profession or community/society or the university. The person exemplifies outstanding professional and personal development, and is given to an alumni within 10 years after their graduation.
Dr. Minga earned her Ph.D. from the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD) in 2014 and is now an assistant professor and clinically certified Speech-Language Pathologist in the Department of Head and Neck Surgery and Communication Sciences within the Department of Neurology at the Duke University School of Medicine.
She has 19 years of clinical experience that fostered her dedication to language production impairments. In her dissertation and later work, she focused on Right Hemisphere Brain Damage (RHD) and the impact of RHD on communication and cognition. One of her major long-term career objectives is to build a research program that will improve the understanding, assessment, and treatment of communication deficits in adults with RHD. She has authored many articles and book chapters on the subject and has presented at professional meetings across the country. Additionally, she has served as a reviewer and editor for a score of professional journals. Dr. Minga has an impressive resume of funded research; her most recent grants include funding of many hundreds of thousands of dollars. Clearly, in the short time since her graduation from UNCG, she has made significant contributions and has established a national reputation for her work.
Dr. Minga’s awards include being named a Fellow in the Academy of Neurologic Communication Disorders and Sciences (2013), the Chancellor’s Research Award at N.C. Central University (2019), the Duke University School of Medicine Whitehead Scholar Award (2021), and the Editor’s Award from the American Speech, Language and Hearing Association (ASHA) for Topics in Language Disorders (2022). She is a member of several professional associations including the ASHA and the National Institute of Health (NIH).
As a researcher from an underrepresented/disadvantaged background, Dr. Minga continues to benefit from and serve as a cross-disciplinary mentor. She is committed to mentoring students from underrepresented/disadvantaged backgrounds in her Right Hemisphere Communication Lab. Since becoming a professor eight years ago, she has supervised more than 25 graduate clinicians of speech-language pathology.