Today we’d like to introduce you to Kimberley Davis.
Hi Kimberley, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Sure, it is because both of my children were born with sickle cell disease. My wonderful daughter Mariama Walters born in 1985 in Maputo, Mozambique. My lovely girl passed away from complications of sickle cell at the age of 21 in March of 2007. Her younger brother John Amara Walters also was born with the most severe form of Sickle Cell Sickle SS on my birthday in February of 1992. My wonderful Universal Man passed away from cardiac complications at the age of 29 in October of 2021. They were my world – loving, brilliant, determined, and they meant a lot to our large close-knit family. Their sudden passing has been devastating. They are truly, truly missed.
I have been involved in sickle cell intensely as a caregiver, co-founder of one of the early pediatric multidisciplinary sickle cell clincs in the nation 30+ years ago at the University of Michigan Hospitals Cancer Center. I have been a strong advocate and started my organization to honor my children’s legacy called the Davis-Walters Sickle Cell Action Network. By training I have been a college professor in political science & communication arts, an IT Senior Business Engineer, project leader and Lead Business architect. I have also volunteered and mentored youth extensively. But I have decided to focus all of my energy to make a substantive difference to the broader sickle cell community through writing groundbreaking legislation, policy advancements and collaboration with the incredible groups, organizations, families and medical caregivers. Here is my “Letter from the Founder:
Letter from the Founder
From lived experience to national action
This organization begins with a truth that has shaped nearly four decades of my life: sickle cell disease is never experienced by one person alone. It is lived by individuals, families, caregivers, clinicians, educators, employers, and communities. It enters homes and classrooms, workplaces and emergency departments. It tests institutions, relationships, and the limits of public will.
The Davis-Walters Sickle Cell Action Network (DW-SCAN) was created in honor of my children, Mariama and John Amara Walters. Their lives were not defined by a diagnosis. They were gifted, loving, determined young people whose potential, contributions, and humanity exceeded every label placed upon them. Their experiences also revealed the profound difference that informed care, strong advocacy, responsive systems, and compassionate leadership can make—and the devastating consequences when those elements are absent.
The work of The Davis-Walters Sickle Cell Action Network (DW-SCAN) transforms remembrance into responsibility. We are building an organization that connects personal experience to policy, community knowledge to institutional action, and scientific possibility to equitable access. Our purpose is not to compete with the many organizations already serving the sickle cell community. It is to add capacity, strengthen alignment, advance practical solutions, and help create the investment required for national progress.
This is a moment of extraordinary promise. Curative therapies and new treatment options are changing the landscape. Yet a medical breakthrough becomes a social breakthrough only when people can understand it, reach it, afford it, and receive the comprehensive support needed before, during, and after treatment. The same is true of every advance in sickle cell care.
Why DW-SCAN exists is for strategic implementation, it is prepared to contribute, and because this moment demands a broader coalition of leadership. It is an invitation to help build a future in which every person living with sickle cell disease is treated with dignity, supported across the lifespan, and able to contribute fully to the communities and nation we share.
We carry forward the names of Mariama and John not only in memory, but in the measurable change their lives inspire.
Kimberley H. Davis
Co-Founder and Executive Director
Davis-Walters Sickle Cell Action Network
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
That’s an interesting question. It wasn’t a “smooth road” for my wonderful children and for me as a mom I was and continue to be a fierce advocate for their care, treatment and treatment options, education and fair education options, their mental health and self-love and their legacy, etc. I would not trade my children in for the world and miss them dearly. I was also not going to let them be defined as sickle cell as they were more than sickle cell. I made sure that all family and extended family were well informed about sickle cell and their care so they could be understood, fully loved and do the things kids do like spend the night with their cousins, travel, jet ski, roller skate, ride bikes, go to camps and live their life to the fullest they wanted to. I and we also had to educate the medical care community they encountered here or in other places we traveled and their were heartbreaking incidents that I had to constantly have the presence of mind to deal with. They also knew they were loved unconditionnally and I am here no matter what to hold them, hug them, provide the warm blankets, each had a dog that knew the week before if they were getting sick — before we could see the symptoms. I don’t think any parent can be without pain seeing and holding their child when they are in crisis and felling like they were being stabbed by knives being twisted into them or worse. I also made sure I was having therapy as well in order to be the best mother I could be.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
My current life purpose is leading the Davis-Walters Sickle Cell Action Network (DW-SCAN) not only to honor their memory & legacy, but to create measurable change for the betterment of the entire sickle cell community that Mariama and John’s lives inspired. They touched so many people in profound ways. We are transforming legacy into actionable, measurable programs and results. I have spoken nationally and internationnally as well as written the “gold standard” legislation for the establishment of a National Cooordinating Center for Sickle Cell. This legislation will be reintroduced this September.
I also have training and background in Public Administration, Public Policy, Statistics and Data Analysis and Communication Arts with BA – Political Science & Journalism, MPA – Masters of Public Policy and MA in Comunication Arts – major Journalism, minor Radio, TV and Film, Certificates in Data Analysis & Statistics from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. I also nearly completed a PhD in Political Science, American Governance, Urban Policy at Wayne State University which I had completed all of my comprehensive exams when my dear Mariama passed away suddenly at age 21.
I taught for 16 years at Adrian College when I graduated with 2 masters at the same time. I taught Political Science and Speech Communications, was Chair of the Political Science Department, was an assistant to the Vice President for Academic Affairs. My children grew up on the college campus. I also launched and obtained over $1million in funding for a non-profit I formed sitting on the campus called the Underground Railroad Education Program and research center where we developed educational programs, tours and national collaborations with the National Park Service, UNESCO, The Detroit River Project created by Kimberly Simmons. I also spoke at national events around the country.
While I was a graduate student at Michigan, I co-founded the University of Michigan Hospitals Multidisciplinary Sickle Cell Disease Clinic with famed hematologist Dr. Laurence Boxer. It was one of the early multidisciplinary clinics in the country. I had full control over its design, function, computer system designs, hiring staff etc. It has grown and still functions and is recognized 30+ years later.
Four years after my daughter Mariama passed away and my son graduated from high school I stepped away from teaching and became a Senior Engineer, Lead Business Architect & Program Manager for a major IT Services Company servinng fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies designing and re-engineering their internal and public facing computer systems. For 14 years I commuted every week to assignments all over the country and in Jakarta, Indonesia and Singapore. While I loved the work immensly and was looking at rejoining the IT workforce last year in Supervisory AI Governance, I decided to focus on my passion – building DW-SCAN and the sickle cell community in honor of my dear Mariama and John Amara.
I also in the 80’s lived and worked in Mozambique and was asked to reorganize and coordinate their national disaster relief agency while they were in the middle of a war and worse drought in a century simultaneously. While their with my husband, Mariama and John’s father for 7 years, I trained members of their National Institute of Cinema in film and interview techniques traveling with my team across the war torn country by road and by plane. I had over $1billion dollars in aid under my responsibility at 28 years old and was responsible for reviewing and negotiating all aid contracts with embassy’s and ambassadors from western and asian nations to assure they met the nationbuilding needs, diets and safety of Mozambique before giving permission for the gifts to proceed to the country. I also cofounded and designed with USAID the International School of Mozambique – a K-12 institution and taught high school – so our children didnt have to go to a boarding school in other countries.
I also nearly completed the University of School of Engineering CyberSecurity Nexus program when my son suddenly passed away in 2021.
What were you like growing up?
I grew up in Adrian, Michigan on a farm. My grandparents had moved from Detroit in early 1920’s as they already had a large family. My grandfather still commuted to work at Chrysler in Detroit by train from Adrian every week until he retired in his 70’s. I have fond memories of going to the train station as a child to wait for grandpa’s train to arrive from Detroit on Friday’s and taking him back to train station on Sunday’s to go back to Detroit.
I have 3 brothers and 1 sister and lots of cousins, aunties and uncles as well as large extended family. I was the 4th of 5. We used to play a lot on the farm that my grandpa rented out to local farmers to grow crops. Before I was born there was livestock and gardens. My grandmother kept a beautiful family garden where we could just pluck food to eat out of the garden while playing if we were hungry. We also had to help our grandparents on the farm which also had a lot of fruit and walnut trees. It was also a stop on the underground railroad as the home was owned by abolistionist Sam Brown, whose great-great granddaughter I came to know and she became part of our extended family. We have a family reunion every August on the farm we still own that my grandparents started over 80 years ago.
I was a tom-boy to be honest! Playing on the farm. School was also a battleground as the only people of color at my school were my cousins until we went to the schools inside the city of adrian at 5th grade. I was an excellent student. But my report card said I fought on the playground everyday — this was because my father and mother has instilled in us if anyone called you the “N” word and we didn’t beat their butts, we would get our butts beat when we got home. So this happened nearly everyday on the playground that someone called me or one of my cousins or little brother the “N” word. But my parents also taught that 99% of people are generally good people and you’ll run into that 1% who are not good and can not be taught to change.
My dad was a Tuskegee Airman and he and some buddies owned their own 4 seat Cessna plane and we would go up flying nearly every weekend. He also did tricks and rolled plane, cut the engines and nose dived like he had done as a Tuskegee Airman. He wanted to continue being a pilot when he was discharged, but the only place black pilots could fly as commercial pilots was in Brazil, which he didn’t want to move to. So he did flying, had his own small construction company building homes and neighborhoods and for prople in our county who were very poor he fixed or built them homes. He also became a supervisor at the local General Motors Fisher Body plant and was a union leader.
My interests were in Math, English, Music, Art, Photography, Spanish, Computer Science and Swimming. I loved writing and reading a lot. My grandparents also taught us a lot about our own heritage and history which was African and Native American as well as the history of the rape of some of my ancestors by their white enslavers. In turn, I taught my children about not only their Sierra Leoneon heritage from their father’s side, but also my heritage.
I created and sold my artwork in highschool of photography, pottery, macrame, screen prints, and sculptures to support my photography and art habits!
In general, I am a person who likes to engage and connect people as well as to promote causes that lead to justice.
Pricing:
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