Joe Leonard, Jr. currently serves as Managing Director of Stoic Hill LLC, a consulting firm that provides diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging consulting services to agricultural organizations, businesses, colleges/universities, and individual farmers. Stoic Hill personnel have worked on the past 5 Farm Bills, served on the USDA/1890 task force and has worked closely with USDA programs the past 15 years. Leonard served in President Obama’s administration as Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), from 2009-2017, where he was nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the US Senate on April 2, 2009. Under Leonard’s Leadership, USDA was able to accomplish several historic accomplishments. To address long standing allegations of past discrimination, Leonard spearheaded an effort to settle large standing class action lawsuits such as Pigford II and with the other class action settlement Native American and women and Hispanic farmer cases Leonard helped to provide payments of more than 2.5 billion dollars combined and over 118 million dollars in debt forgiveness. Before joining USDA, Leonard served as Executive Director of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). While at the CBC, Leonard managed the daily activities of the Caucus and helped guide the legislative policy for its 43 congressional members. Prior to his role at the CBC, Leonard was hired by Dr. Dorothy Height and Rev. Joseph Lowery to serve as the Executive Director of the Black Leadership Forum, an umbrella organization of 32 member groups that together work to develop and implement public polices for African Americans in urban and rural America.