Co-founder, Deaton Scholars Program, University of Missouri
Anne Deaton welcomes the opportunity to mentor aspiring leaders in public service, community change, and organizational development. Her interests in advancing socio-economic change for the common good range from the community, state, to the international level. In 2016, Anne helped found the University of Missouri’s Deaton Scholars Program which engages undergraduate, graduate and professional students in small teams focusing on issues of extreme poverty and food insecurity. Anne’s lifelong commitment to public service began with early volunteer experiences in Appalachia and Ecuador. Those activities led to being a counselor with the Children’s International Summer Village Program (CISV, England) which sponsored her and 4 American youth representing the United States at an international peace camp in Romania. Those formative experiences were instrumental to her founding the now 20-year-old community service organization (The Children’s Grove, Columbia, MO) which builds school and community programs that promote a culture of kindness and support for the emotional and mental well-being of children, youth and young adults. Throughout her professional life, Anne has worked for women’s empowerment: she was key in establishing an undergraduate women’s leadership organization Griffith’s Leadership Society for Women (University of Missouri) and is a founding member of OurBodiesOurChoice (Blacksburg, VA). She is on the Board of the Virginia Tech Lifelong Learning Institute.
Her professional career spans academia and state government where she served on faculty at VA Tech (Deputy Director, Center for Gerontology) and the University of Missouri (Department of Human Development and Family Studies) before serving as Missouri’s Deputy Director of the Division of Aging and then Director of the Missouri Division of Developmental Disabilities. (University of Kentucky, BA, Phi Beta Kappa; Virginia Tech, ED.D.). Anne is the mother of 4 adult children, 7 grandchildren, and resides with her husband in Virginia where her free time is spent writing poetry.
