Nancy Cantor

Nancy Cantor, Chancellor of Rutgers University-Newark, is recognized nationally and internationally for her leadership in emphasizing the role of universities as anchor institutions in their communities, especially by forging diverse, cross-sectorcollaboratives and leveraging publicly engaged scholarship to advance racial equity and equitable growth.

At Rutgers University-Newark, a diverse, urban, public research university, she leads and promulgates efforts to leverage the university's many strengths, particularly its exceptional diversity, tradition of high-impact research, and role as an anchor institution in Newark, New Jersey, through strategic investments in five broad areas in which the university's strengths align with those of cross-sector partners: educational pathways from pre-K through college; equitable growth through urban entrepreneurship and economic development; cultivating creative expression through the arts and culture; strong, healthy and safe neighborhoods; and science in the urban environment.

Prior to her current position, Cantor was Chancellor and President of Syracuse University, where the breadth, depth, and success of her efforts to foster mutually beneficial collective impact initiatives between the university and community earned her one of higher education's highest honors, the Carnegie Corporation Academic Leadership Award, in 2008.