Nicole Avant

About

Nicole D. Avant, Pharm.D., BCACP, is the Founder, Owner, CEO, and Lead Consultant of Avant Consulting Group. She brings extensive experience as a licensed and board-certified ambulatory care pharmacist. Previously, Dr. Avant served as the clinical assistant professor and chief diversity officer at the University of Cincinnati College of Pharmacy, making history as its first Black woman faculty member. Her pioneering work focuses on advancing health equity through structural competence, pleasure activism, joy, and relaxation.

As a researcher, Dr. Avant has produced groundbreaking scholarship. Her work includes the first publication on implicit attitudes about race among first-year pharmacy students, titled "Qualitative Analysis of Student Pharmacists’ Reflections of Harvard’s Race Implicit Association Test." Additionally, her manuscript, "Not to Exclude You, But…": Characterization of Pharmacy Student Microaggressions and Recommendations for Academic Pharmacy, received the 2021 Best Publication Award for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy Social and Administrative Sciences Section.

Dr. Avant's publications cover topics such as implicit bias, microaggressions, navigating power and marginalized identities, pharmacist’s role in eradicating hierarchies, and cultivating structurally competent clinicians. With clinical experience in diverse settings, she has managed conditions including diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, HIV/AIDS, and warfarin therapy.

In her leadership role at Avant Consulting Group, Dr. Avant has collaborated with various institutions, providing support to health systems, educational organizations, non-profits, tech companies, and more. She offers diversity, equity, and inclusion coaching to councils, executive leaders, administrators, and staff.

Dr. Avant has held numerous University and national leadership positions, including serving as the treasurer for the National Pharmaceutical Association. Her accolades include the 2021 Best Publication Award, the 2017 Rising Star Award from the YWCA, and the 2016, 2017, and 2019 Breakfast of Champions Award from the University of Cincinnati Darwin T. Turner Scholars Program.

She has been featured in various media outlets, including Cincinnati Edition WVXU (NPR affiliate), Women of Cincy, PharmacyForward Podcast, and more. Dr. Avant's commitment extends to contributing to reports on Black infant mortality and racial equity in maternal and infant health.

In terms of education, Dr. Avant earned her Bachelor of Science in Finance with Honors from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Business. She graduated magna cum laude with a Pharm.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Pharmacy and completed two years of post-graduate residency training at the University of Oklahoma (OU) College of Pharmacy.

Dr. Avant is dedicated to being a scholarly and pleasure activist, advocating for the rights of minoritized groups, particularly in the context of health. She emphasizes the importance of awareness of one's positionality in systems of power and the need to deconstruct prevailing ideologies. Simultaneously, Dr. Avant champions radical self-love, rest, relaxation, pleasure, and communities of care as tools to resist oppression.