Dr. Judith Rodin
Member Since 11/15/10
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Judith Rodin is president of The Rockefeller Foundation. The first woman to lead an Ivy League institution, she was previously president of the University of Pennsylvania and provost of Yale University. During her first three years at The Rockefeller Foundation, Dr. Rodin recalibrated the foundation’s focus for the 21st century, launching major initiatives to strengthen global health systems, bolster resilience to climate change in poor communities around the world, mobilize an agricultural revolution in Africa, rebuild New Orleans in the wake of Katrina, strengthen the economic security of working families, and shape smarter, more sustainable transportation policies in the United States. She is the first woman to serve as the foundation's president in its 95-year history. At the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Rodin presided over an unprecedented decade of growth and progress that transformed the institution, its campus, and its community. Under her leadership Penn doubled its research funding and tripled both its annual fund-raising and the size of its endowment. It engineered a comprehensive, award-winning, and internationally acclaimed neighborhood revitalization program in West Philadelphia. And the university attracted record numbers of undergraduate applicants and welcomed its most selective classes in history, while climbing from 16th in the leading national rankings to fourth. Dr. Rodin was a member of Yale University’s faculty for 22 years before she became provost. She was trained as a research psychologist and pioneered the behavioral medicine movement. Dr. Rodin graduated from Penn, earned her PhD from Columbia University, and has since received 14 honorary doctorate degrees. She is the author of more than 200 academic articles and chapters, and has written or cowritten 12 books, including her most recent, The University and Urban Renewal: Out of the Ivory Tower and into the Streets (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). Dr. Rodin served on President Clinton’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology, is a member of several leading academic societies, and sits on a number of leading corporate and nonprofit boards in addition to United States Artists.
