Associate Provost and Executive Director of Career Education

Search for the Associate Provost and Executive Director of Career Education

Wellesley College

Wellesley, Massachusetts

Wellesley College, one of the nation’s first and most renowned private, women’s liberal arts colleges, seeks an Associate Provost and Executive Director of Career Education. The role reports directly to the President with a dotted line to the Provost, sits on the Provost’s Leadership team, and oversees a talented staff across a holistic career education model that integrates fellowships and civic engagement, as well as career preparation and support. Given the myriad challenges created by the Covid-19 pandemic, this is a pivotal moment for a visionary leader to drive innovation, and further strengthen Wellesley’s commitment to prepare and inspire every Wellesley student to craft a lifetime of opportunity and realize their full potential. The next Associate Provost will serve as a key leader in setting the direction of career education at Wellesley and provide strategic leadership at an institution that has fully embraced career planning as an institutional priority.

Wellesley is a college with a storied history. It has played, and continues to play, a decisive role in shaping leadership models for women. Founded in 1870 by Pauline and Henry Durant to "offer to young women opportunities for education equivalent to those usually provided in colleges for young men,” it opened its doors in 1875 and was the first American college to have a president, faculty, and students who were all women. Today, the College is known for the excellence of its education, the beauty of its campus, its gifted faculty, and the uniqueness of its campus culture. Most of all, Wellesley is known for the thousands of accomplished, thoughtful graduates it has sent out into the world for over 100 years—graduates who are committed to making a difference.

The Wellesley Career Education model illuminates the strengths of the liberal arts education and encourages active participation of the full college ecosystem in order to support Wellesley students from the moment of arrival on-campus through alumnae years. Building on organizational enhancements and successes of the past, the next Associate Provost will lead from a position of strength; provide strategic and operational leadership; employ innovative approaches to further update and expand services that assist students in their professional and academic development; coordinate career activities and programs with faculty; foster a campus-wide career culture; and maintain and bolster relationships with alumnae, employers, and parents. The Associate Provost will continue to mobilize Wellesley’s formidable alumnae network, and collaborate with faculty members and student-affairs officers, to facilitate undergraduate career exploration and alumnae career transitions.

To achieve these ambitions, Wellesley College requires a creative, intellectually curious, and entrepreneurial leader who will leverage internal and external resources in support of students. The ideal candidate will have a track record of collaborative leadership, experience leading a high-performing team, strong interpersonal and communication skills, a commitment to inclusion and diversity, comfort with data and a focus on outcome-driven work, and the capacity to serve as a credible champion of the liberal arts and of women’s higher education. The successful candidate will have a demonstrated ability to engage faculty, trustees, and senior administrators, to counsel creative, diligent, professionally ambitious and service-minded students, and to steward a deeply invested and resourceful alumnae and parent population.

Please direct all inquiries, expressions of interest, and nominations in confidence electronically to:
Ponneh Varho and Sabrina Singh at Isaacson, Miller: www.imsearch.com/7606

Wellesley College is an equal opportunity and affirmative action institution, committed to increasing the diversity of the College community.