June DePonte Sernak
Dr. June DePonte Sernak, Ed.D., is an accomplished diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) leader and organizational strategist currently serving as Statewide Multicultural Leadership Officer at the Center for Family Services. With a career spanning telecommunications, nonprofit leadership, and higher education, she brings a multidisciplinary perspective to advancing cultural competency and inclusive excellence. In her current role, she collaborates with behavioral health organizations across New Jersey to design and implement diversity strategies, develop training programs, and support leadership in embedding equity into operations, service delivery, and community engagement.
Dr. Sernak’s career includes executive and academic leadership roles, including serving as Dean of Life Long Learning at Rowan College at Burlington County, where she led workforce development, diversity programming, and community-based initiatives across multiple campuses. She is also an Adjunct Professor at Wilmington University, teaching ethics, organizational citizenship, and social responsibility. In addition, she serves as a corporate leadership consultant with the Derrick Samuels Leadership Institute and as Chief Inclusion Officer of Rafforzare, LLC, where she advises organizations and individuals on DEI strategy, leadership development, and personal brand transformation.
She holds a Doctor of Education in Organizational Leadership from Wilmington University and a Master of Business Administration in Management from Strayer University. A recognized thought leader, Dr. Sernak is deeply engaged in community advocacy, serving as Board Chair of the Alice Paul Center for Gender Justice and contributing to statewide initiatives addressing mental health stigma and cultural awareness. Her work reflects a commitment to ensuring equitable access, amplifying underrepresented voices, and fostering inclusive systems that empower individuals and communities to thrive.
• Human Trafficking Prevention Certificate from U.S. IDHR
• Native Knobs 360 Certificate from Smithsonian
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Certificate
• Human Rights Education Training
• Wilmington University
• Strayer University
• Board Chair of Alice Paul Center for Gender Justice
• NAWBO SJ
• Joint Base McGuire Dix Lakehurst (JBMDL)
• SJWIB
• Native American Cultural Activities including Powwows and Healing Circles
• Women's Advocacy and Support Initiatives
What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
A woman commander in the military once told me something that really stuck with me: You will not be there to watch the entire garden grow. Maybe you'll go there once and you'll be the person that plants the seed. Maybe the next place you go, you'll water the flowers. And maybe even at some other place, you'll be the one picking them, but you can't do everything for everybody. Just realize you have a piece of the big puzzle. I thought that was really a great way to put it, because I would start to say, oh my gosh, I got to do this or that, and they said, no, that might not be your role here. Your role might just be to plant the seeds, and then somebody else would come back in behind you and do the rest of the work. I also learned that it's better for me to be of value wherever I am, and to raise my hand and learn something new, and take that with me to the next step. Even if it was just a small opportunity to volunteer on a project, I would do it just because I would either meet new people or I would learn something new. That always helped me because it gave me a different skill set for the next opportunity.
What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say to never doubt your instinct. Just prepare for things, and you know what you're doing, and don't be discouraged by the belief system of imposter syndrome. We're all multifaceted. We have so many things from an intergenerational perspective and the intersectionality, that you're just learning new things at different times. I think sometimes we get caught up in other people's perceptions of us, and that's really just a voice that comes over us that really is not the right thing. I particularly don't like the term imposter syndrome. I just think we have a lot of things that we enjoy and are good at, and why should we have to be limited to just one thing? So don't feel like you're an imposter at anything, you're just learning your way through the next role that you have.
What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Some of the biggest challenges are that many people don't take a breath and pause and think about their own lives and their own cultures. A lot of times, we don't have good coping mechanisms when things go wrong, and the reaction is usually something that is really bad. That's why you see a lot of the road rage, you see a lot of hate crimes. There's a lot of people that just don't know themselves well enough to have the emotional intelligence to handle it better when they come into conflict. Unfortunately, when I get called in, it's usually because somebody's done something wrong. They've said something that they know is a racial slur, or I've had people call me about things like fried chicken or watermelon being served at inappropriate times. I think part of what I really think is an opportunity is an opportunity for education. It's an opportunity for people to learn - leave your house, go to a festival, try a new food, listen to different music. There are 90,000 National Historic Sites in the United States, and people don't even know about them. We have access to so much information, and people still aren't using it. For me, accountability is probably one of the biggest things that I teach - teaching adults how to apologize when they've learned something or that they've misspoken, even if it's gender pronouns or anything along those lines. At least say, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that, thank you for sharing that with me.