Bio
Mary Watson is Special Advisor to the Provost at The New School. She previously served as Executive Dean of the Schools of Public Engagement, a role she assumed in July 2014. In that capacity, she led the founding division of The New School, advancing its innovative approaches to action-oriented, engaged learning in the world.
Her current work at The New School includes co-leading a university-wide management, leadership, and entrepreneurship initiative, Management @ The New School, which bridges programs in strategic design and management, media management, arts entrepreneurship, and nonprofit and organizational change management.
Watson is a key leader worldwide in university networks advancing change in higher education, including the Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative and the Ashoka Changemaker Campus initiative. She is co-founder of The New School’s university-wide Social Innovation Initiative and Impact Entrepreneurship Initiative, which includes The New School Collaboratory, a Rockefeller Foundation-funded initiative on university–community partnerships.
Watson contributed the chapter “Designing the University of the Future: A New Global Agenda for Higher Education” for the book The New Global Agenda: Priorities, Practices, and Pathways for the International Community (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), edited by Diana Ayton-Shenker.
Watson’s creative practice and scholarship on the human rights of workers reflect her commitment to a more just and equitable world. She has more than two decades of experience in higher education as a faculty member, chair, associate dean, and interim dean, as well as broad experience in change leadership consulting for organizations and universities. She is a recipient of The New School’s Distinguished University Teaching Award. Watson holds a PhD in Organization Studies from Vanderbilt University.