The New York University Board of Trustees has named Linda G. Mills to be the university’s 17th president, the first woman to be appointed to the post. She will take up her new duties on July 1, 2023.

Prior to her appointment, the president-designate served for more than a decade as NYU’s Vice Chancellor and Senior Vice Provost for Global Programs and University Life. She is the Lisa Ellen Goldberg Professor of Social Work, Public Policy, and Law, also the executive director of the NYU Center on Violence and Recovery. Her principal areas of scholarly focus are trauma, bias, and domestic violence. She is a widely published author of articles and books. As a filmmaker, she has produced award-winning documentaries, including one on the Holocaust experiences of her own family.

She received her PhD in Health Policy in 1994 from Brandeis University, where she was a Pew Scholar; her MSW from San Francisco State University in 1986; her JD from the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco in 1983; and her BA in history and social thought from the University of California, Irvine in 1979. She was admitted to the California Bar in 1983, and first became a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in 1990.

Her appointment follows a six-month international search by a Presidential Search Committee of trustees, deans, faculty, students and administrators that reviewed more than 100 candidates.