As the Executive Vice President of People & Culture for the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota, Briana Joyner is a passionate leader of people and impact with a diverse business background and extensive experience. Previously, she held the position of Chief Human Resources & Inclusion Officer for the Minnesota Historical Society and served in this role on the MNHS Leadership Team.

Briana’s vast experience includes organizational development, behavioral science, evaluation, operations, strategy development and implementation, learning and development, human resources, culture transformation, diversity, equity, access, and inclusion. Briana has worked to develop broad ownership of equity work, a sense of belonging, and deep intercultural competence across the MNHS community. She continues to champion, inspire, mentor, and empower the next generation of change makers within MNHS and beyond. Briana serves as the Board President for Hallie Q. Brown, Board of Director for Solid Ground and she is a Board of Trustee for the OD Global Network where she teaches other OD and D&I practitioners on JEDI related topics. Most recently, Briana was named Best-in-Class Executives as a 2023 Notable BIPOC Executive by the Twin Cities Business Magazine and in 2022 she was named as a Women in Business Honoree by the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal for her outstanding work.

Before joining MNHS, Briana worked in various positions in the field of people and culture development, human resources and providing strategic leadership in roles at Target Corporation and public and privately held companies throughout the Twin Cities. She has two B.A.s in Marketing and International Business from St. Cloud State University and an M.B.A. in business administration with a concentration in organizational development, human resources management, and change leadership from the University of St. Thomas.

Briana joined the Board of Solid Ground in 2022 and currently serves on Solid Ground’s Governance Committee. When asked about her connection to Solid Ground, Briana says: “My connection to Solid Ground comes through a passion to end housing inequities for women with children and establishing pathways for success to end homelessness and to end the harmful cycle it creates. I grew up in a household where my father worked tirelessly to help unhoused individuals become housed and developed opportunities for people to change the trajectory of their lives. Those values and people centric approaches to life are what I grew up learning and witnessing. It is my honor to continuously give back in ways that are meaningful to the communities that raised me.”