A former Hinds County Community College educator and department chairperson, who most recently served as workforce coordinator for the Central Mississippi Planning and Development District (CMPDD) has joined Co-Lin as the new Dean of Workforce Education.
In her new role at Co-Lin, Dr. Geanell C. Adams is responsible for connecting trained employees of the college with employers throughout the seven-county Co-Lin district. The job involves, on one hand, developing relationships with employers and area economic developers to identify training needs and, on the other hand, assessing existing Co-Lin workforce training programs to continue, enhance, or shift them based on local industry need and market saturation or developing new training initiatives.
From 2002 to 2007, Adams was based in Greenville, Mississippi, as a court reporter serving Washington, Leflore, and Sunflower Counties as an official and freelancer before moving into education at Hinds Community College (HCC) as the state’s only Certified Court Reporting Instructor (CRI), and later chair of the program until 2017 when she started teaching and served as chair of the Business Office Technology program at the college. From 2022 until February 2024, when she came to Co-Lin, Adams managed grants, internship and apprenticeship awards, sub-award contracts, and equal opportunity monitoring for the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act program through CMPDD.
A native of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, in the Delta region seven miles north of Cleveland, Adams joined the military when she was a senior at John F. Kennedy High School in Mound Bayou. After her high school graduation in 1991, she went to U.S. Army basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, trained as a medic at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, and served during Desert Shield and Desert Storm in the Middle East before returning home on Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) status at Walter Reed and Brook Army Medical Center after sustaining an injury.
From 1992 to 1996, Adams attended Delta State University (DSU), earning a BA Degree in political science and beginning coursework on an MA Degree in community development, which she didn’t complete until 2020 after pivoting into court reporting and earning two Masters of Business Administration (MBA) Degrees and an Education Specialist Degree at DSU.
At Prince Institute of Professional Studies in Montgomery, Alabama, from July 1999 to 2002, Adams earned an Associate’s Degree in Court Reporting Technology and a Medical Transcription certificate. She received MBAs in Human Resource Management (2016) and Healthcare Administration (2020) as well as her Education Specialist Degree with a focus on Educational Administration & Supervision (2017) before completing her MA in community development in the economic development track.
In May 2023, Adams received her Doctor of Education Degree in Higher Education from the University of Mississippi at Oxford.
Adams and her husband, Lee, a retired Greenville, MS police chief, live in Terry, Mississippi. They have a son, Arian, a sophomore at the St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Ridgeland, MS.