Winthrop Women's Coalition

Sumter, who oversees Winthrop’s largest degree-granting college, has served in numerous leadership roles, including as the university’s first Provost’s Faculty Fellow. She’s been published frequently in refereed scientific journals, such as Science’s Nextwave, and has served as chair of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology’s Minority Affairs Committee. She was also in recent years elected to the society’s council, one of only nine selected nationwide. 

She holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of South Carolina and completed her post-doctoral fellowship at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She joined the Winthrop community in 2004. She’s taught courses in general chemistry and biochemistry sequence and loves to mentor undergraduate research. 

Before her current role, James taught at different universities, including Marymount, where she directed student research in microbiology and managed the scientific laboratories. She also contributed to The Pandora Report, a biodefense blog, where she wrote about the use of U.S. drones to fight terrorism, the transporting of Ebola infected patients to the U.S., and the political and technological processes for destroying chemical weapons in Syria. She’s served as an expert for the Federation of American Scientists, interned at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism & Responses to Terrorism and completed a fellowship with the Chemical and Biological Defense ORISE program. 

She holds multiple degrees from Winthrop: a B.S. in biology; a B.A. in political science with a German minor; and a master’s degree in biology. She’s a Ph.D. candidate at George Mason University, from which she earned a master’s degree in biodefense. 

Johnson works as a medical writer with MedThink SciCom, where she delivers accurate, inclusive and engaging content for the organization’s biopharma clients. She previously worked in a similar role for the University of Tennessee’s Health Science Center College of Pharmacy. 

Johnson holds a Ph.D. in pathology and immunology from Case Western Reserve University and completed her postdoctoral fellowship in immunology at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, where her research focused on cell-mediated immune regulation in airway model systems.