Dr. Gloria Bozeman Herndon is a native of East St Louis, Illinois. She attended Southern Illinois University and graduated magna cum laude with Bachelor degrees in Political Science, Philosophy and Music. Dr. Herndon continued on to Johns Hopkins University where she received a Masters Degree in International Economics and Law. She was later accepted into the doctoral program at Johns Hopkins University where she attained additional academic success as a Rockefeller Fellow. Notably, Dr. Herndon also received an honorary mention for the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. While pursuing her doctorate, Dr. Herndon also worked as a research fellow at the Brookings Institute and was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
While completing her doctoral course work, Dr. Herndon accepted a position as an economist withthe U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service. A year after joining the USDA, she was accepted into the Foreign Service of the U.S. Department of State. Posting as an economic/commercial officer in Lagos, Kaduna, Kinshasa, Monrovia and Nouakchott. Along with her regular duties, she sought to further the U.S.-Nigerian trade relationship by strengthening the Nigerian–American Chamber of Commerce. Dr. Herndon spearheaded initial delegation to the U.S. from Lagos and repeated this success by leading the Kaduna Chamber’s first delegation to the United States as well. While in Nigeria, Dr. Herndon wrote her dissertation and taught undergraduate economics courses at Ahmadu Bello University. She received her doctorate in Economics and International Law from Johns Hopkins University. Returning to the United States in the mid-1980’s, Dr. Herndon continued at the State Department as a consultant, concurrently she joined The Equitable Companies as an insurance broker, financial planner and security’s dealer. In 1985, she saw an opportunity for as an insurance broker to servethe needs of diplomatic missions in the U.S. and founded GB Herndon & Associates for that purpose. Building upon her relationships in the international community, Dr. Herndon focused the startup company on designing health, property and casualty insurance programs for embassies in Washington, DC and U.N. world-wide international missions. In 1989, she pioneered the design of specialized healthcare plans for foreign students enrolled in U.S. schools. Some more of her notable initiatives include developing the Walmart’s Pharmacy Plan Program and created the first ever National Alliance of Postal and Federal Employment; collaboration with NIH and Gates Foundation and Harvard University on the development of the Botswana AIDS Initiative
