Top 25 Women in Higher Education and Beyond

The 17th president of Shaw University, Dubroy was previously special assistant
to the president for process optimization and associate professor of chemistry and chair of Shaw’s Department of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. She began her career as a researcher at the chemical company BASF, moving on to management and overseeing a $35 million budget. An entrepreneur, Dubroy co-founded a hair care company. She holds a doctorate in physical organic chemistry from North Carolina State University and an MBA in marketing from Rutgers University.

Hall, an expert on Shakespeare and 16th and 17th century English literature,
teaches and researches on Renaissance/early modern literature and culture, critical race theory, Black feminist studies, visual culture, slavery studies, food studies and the digital humanities. She won a Tow Award in 2015 for Innovative and Outstanding Pedagogy. Hall is a former trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America.

Recognized for her work in Asian cultural studies, Kim has spent most of her
professional career associated with the University of California, Berkeley, where she earned a doctorate. She served on the President’s Commission on the Celebration of Women in American History. Kim, a New York native, is the recipient of a Fulbright fellowship and former head of Asian American studies and former associate dean of the Graduate Division at Berkeley.

Penn’s president since 2004, Gutmann is also Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science and a professor of communication in the university’s Annenberg School for Communication. She’s a former provost and professor of politics at Princeton University. Gutmann has authored numerous books, is a founding member of the Global Colloquium of University Presidents, and is the W.E.B. Du Bois Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. From 2014 to 2015, Gutmann served as chair of the Association of American Universities.

Murano is the university’s director of the Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture, which helps to fight hunger and poverty in the developing world. At the institute, she has managed a project portfolio of $55 million. Murano is a formernU.S. Department of Agriculture under secretary for food safety. From 2005 to 2007, she was vice chancellor of agriculturalnand life sciences of the Texas A&M University System, dean ofmthe college of agriculture and life sciences, and director of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station. She served as president of Texas A&M from 2008 to 2009.

Montgomery oversees all compliance activities related to the NCAA and Big South Conference and serves as the coordinator for the Big South’s Council of Senior Woman Administrators and Student-Athlete Advisory Committee.  In addition to providing everyday governance and legislative services to conference members, she studies and interprets NCAA and Big South rules and regulations. Montgomery is a former student-athlete at Big South member Gardner-Webb University and a four-year letter winner in basketball.

A public intellectual and published author who is active across various media, Perry edited the Barnes & Noble classic edition of the Narrative of Sojourner Truth. She’s written numerous articles in the fields of law, African-American studies and cultural studies, and has published on topics ranging from racial inequality to hip-hop. Perry earned a doctorate from Harvard University and a juris doctor from Harvard Law School.

A frequent writer on faculty development and leadership, Rockquemore’s career interests began with interracial children and families. Her research has been highlighted in various media. Once Rockquemore became a tenured professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, she began to focus on improving conditions for pre-tenure faculty. She now conducts workshops for new faculty members at schools across the United States.

Smalls has more than three decades of experience in the public and private sectors. Before she joined Viacom, Smalls worked in public sector positions on both the state and national levels, spending a decade as chief of staff for a member of Congress. She earned a master’s degree in public administration from the University of South Carolina. Smalls has established an endowment for the University of South Carolina’s Ronald McNair Center that offers scholarships and support to engineering students from underrepresented populations.

A member of Arizona State University’s faculty since 1994, Tsosie served as executive director of the Indian Legal Program from 1996 to 2011. Next came a joint appointment on the faculty of philosophy in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, where she is also a faculty affiliate of the American Indian Studies Program and the Mary Lou Fulton Teacher’s College. Tsosie received the Individual Leadership Award from the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education in 2014.

Valantine joined the National Institutes of Health from Stanford University, where she had been senior associate dean for diversity and leadership at Stanford School of Medicine. She completed her medical studies at St George’s Hospital, London University before moving to the United States to train as a fellow with leading cardiologists and cardiac surgeons. At Stanford, Valantine rose to become a full professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine and director of heart transplantation research.

Weatherford is a New York Times best-selling author with 44 books to her name, including Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom, for which she won a Caldecott Honor Medal. Her research interests include jazz, racist stereotypes and the African-American freedom struggle. Weatherford earned an M.F.A. from the University of South Carolina and an M.A. in publication design
from the University of Baltimore.

Prior to Antioch, Webb worked for Alliant International University, where she was a professor and founding university dean of the Shirley M. Hufstedler School of Education. Webb most recently served as associate provost for community engagement at Alliant. She has held teaching and leadership positions at Southern University and A&M College, Howard University and Indiana University Bloomington.

Yow, a former head coach, became the first in NCAA history to lead three previously unranked women’s basketball teams — Kentucky, Oral Roberts and Florida — into the Top 20. When she joined the University of Maryland, College Park she became the Atlantic Coast Conference’s first female athletics director. She previously served as athletics director at Saint Louis University.