Dr. Checo James Rorie is a champion for diversity in science. He is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Biology at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. He attended Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, GA, where he graduated in 1998 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology, and then attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Curriculum in Toxicology Ph.D. program and graduated in 2004. He did a postdoctoral fellowship at New York University in Biochemistry and then did a second postdoctoral fellowship as a SPIRE Scholar at UNC Chapel Hill. In 2008, Checo joined the Biology Department at NC A&T as the Professor of Genetics. His Breast Cancer Research lab focuses on breast cancer health disparities in African-American women. In addition, Dr. Rorie is the principal investigator and director of the NIH/NIGMS funded Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC USTAR) grant that funds undergraduates in biomedical research. Dr. Rorie is a councilor on the executive board of the NC Society of Toxicology, and is also the Partnership Chair on the Board of Science Communicators of North Carolina. Finally, he is the Principal Investigator of an NSF funded HBCU-UP/Broadening Participation Research grant that studies the role that science capital plays in African American student retention and persistence in science.