10-15-2023 Women to Watch - Flipbook - Page 20
Rana DellaRocco
Chief of the Forensic Science and Evidence
Services Division,
Baltimore Police Department
When Rana DellaRocco, 49, first applied for a position with the Baltimore Police Department’s crime
lab, an interviewer asked whether she knew she’d be
going out to crime scenes. “Did not know that’s what
this was, but sounds awesome,” she replied. Over the
next two decades, she rose from crime scene technician to become the agency’s first female lab director,
and as of last year, its first female chief of the forensic
science and evidence services division.
In that time, the landscape of forensic science has
transformed through the growing popularity of the
“CSI” television series, which DellaRocco called a
“gateway” to the sciences, and the Baltimore Police
Department has embarked on its own transformation.
As chief, DellaRocco is facilitating the crime scene
unit’s “renaissance” and finding a new space for the
division’s work.
She is also working to integrate the division by building cooperation, and she is teaching, so she has a hand
in shaping the next generation of forensic scientists.
She’s still as enthusiastic about the discipline today as
she was two decades ago.
“We’re here to just be like, look, this is what the
evidence is. It makes a big difference,” she said.
— Darcy Costello
LLOYD FOX
M’Balu “Lu” Bangura
Chief of equity and fair practices, Enoch Pratt Free Library
M’Balu “Lu” Bangura, 33, never thought she would end up working for a
library, but it has turned out to be the right fit. With a criminal justice degree,
she started her career as a one-woman department investigating civil rights
claims for the city of Tacoma, Washington, before taking a job as a civil rights
investigator in Baltimore, leading her to become the city’s first equity specialist.
In 2021, she joined the Enoch Pratt Free Library and, as of June, serves as
the chief of equity and fair practices for that institution and the Maryland
State Library Resource Center. In that role, Bangura is organizing programs
for women reentering the workforce following prison sentences, planning a
grocery store-style market at the Highlandtown library branch offering free
produce and lending out hundreds of laptops to bridge the city’s digital equity
divide.
“It is my strong belief that libraries are more than just books. Libraries have
a duty to respond to the needs of the community. Libraries are supposed to be a
resource and when you work in an inner city that has so many needs, it would be
irresponsible for us to not be expanding and trying new things,” Bangura said.
— Dillon Mullan
20 | 2023 | WOMEN TO WATCH
BARBARA HADDOCK TAYLOR