Dr. Melissa Gilliam will lead Boston University as school's first Black and first female president

A career educator, higher ed administrator and physician will soon lead Boston University as the school's first Black and first female president.

After a search that took a little more than a year, the university's board of trustees announced Wednesday it had selected Dr. Melissa Gilliam to steer the university, starting on July 1, 2024. (Boston University owns WBUR's broadcast license; WBUR is editorially independent.)

Gilliam, 58, will join BU as its 11th president after working two years as the executive vice president and provost at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.

“I'm really excited about how engaged Boston University is in the city and how engagement has been a hallmark of BU,” Gilliam said in a statement from Boston University. “I’m looking forward to hearing from people, learning and listening. I lead by listening, collaborating, and empowering other people. That is the best way to run big organizations, to get everyone excited and engaged and empowered and doing more than they think they're capable of doing.”

Prior to her work at Ohio State, Gilliam spent most of her career at the University of Chicago. Over her 16 years there, she worked as a professor and held multiple leadership roles including associate dean of diversity and inclusion for the school's biological sciences division. The former professor of obstetrics and gynecology also founded and led the university's Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry and Innovation in Sexual and Reproductive Health.

Gilliam's move to the East Coast is a homecoming of sorts. She graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1993 before settling in the Chicago area, where she specialized in obstetrics and gynecology. That focus inspired her subsequent research with adolescent parents and the societal factors that contribute to teen pregnancies.

In an interview with WBUR's Tiziana Dearing, Gilliam said her passion to understand human inequality and intergenerational poverty shaped her career trajectory. And while she enjoyed practicing and teaching medicine, she said the late former University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer helped inspire her pivot to higher education administration. As her mentor, she said Zimmer helped her realize that university leadership roles can be humanitarian roles, too.

"They're really about improving and addressing some of the major issues facing the world today," Gilliam told WBUR's Radio Boston. "Universities produce knowledge, but they also produce knowledge in the service of others. And that idea of advancing the lives of young people and knowledge creation are core to what drives me."

"Universities produce knowledge, but they also produce knowledge in the service of others. And that idea of advancing the lives of young people and knowledge creation are core to what drives me."

Dr. Melissa Gilliam

Gilliam's parents also featured as significant role models in her life. Her mother, Dorothy Gilliam, was the first Black woman to be hired as a reporter at the Washington Post in 1961. And her late father, Sam Gilliam, was known as an innovator in the world of abstract painting and art.

“We grew up with a very strong humanitarian focus,” Gilliam said in the statement released by BU. “And a huge focus on the impact that one could have in the world.”

A team of 16 people were involved in the search and hiring process for Boston University's next president, along with input from hundreds of university staff, students and alumni. The initial candidate pool comprised of more than 400 people.

“We took this task with the utmost seriousness and with an eye toward the future of Boston University,” Antoinette “Tonie” Leatherberry, chair of the search committee and a member of BU's board of trustees, said in the university statement.

The board's chair, Ahmass Fakahany, said the university was "at an incredible juncture," having "earned the right to dream big" about the school's potential.

"Hiring Dr. Melissa Gilliam is a tremendous step in that direction,” he said in the university statement.

Ohio State leaders congratulated Gilliam on her appointment. Peter Mohler, acting president and executive vice president for research, said the school was grateful for Gilliam's service, adding she played a critical role in advancing faculty excellence in her role as provost and executive vice president.

“Serving as president of Boston University is a tremendous opportunity for Dr. Gilliam to continue to contribute to the lives of students and their families through higher education. We wish her the very best,” said Mohler in a post on Ohio State's website.

In Boston, several groups, including the city's NAACP chapter, said they're thrilled by the news of Gilliam's hire.

"I think she'll be an important voice at this critical time in our nation and in our commonwealth where we're really wrestling with what the future of higher education looks like," said NAACP Boston branch President Tanisha Sullivan.

Sullivan added that Gilliam's hire reflects heartening progress in the higher education landscape, as she becomes the latest of several Black women leaders charged with overseeing highly accomplished institutions. Most recently, Claudine Gay was chosen to lead Harvard University this year, and in 2020, Lynn Perry Wooten became the president of Simmons University. Since 2016, Paula Johnson has served as Wellesley's president.

Sullivan said she hopes Gilliam will place a strong focus on issues like student debt, as well as diversity and inclusion.

"These are issues that she and the team she assembles will need to remain not only actively engaged around, but we're going to need them to lead," she said.

Those goals appear to line up with Gilliam's vision for BU and her role. As the university's next president, she said she hopes to foster a learning environment that involves people from a variety of backgrounds and worldviews.

Many of the metrics of success she cited are student-focused, from instructional rigor to ensuring positive graduation rates and helping to ensure students find high-quality jobs after their studies. In her Radio Boston interview, she said metrics like school rankings and research dollars should follow if the university serves its students well.

"Metrics are nice, and we'll find them and we'll track them, but the process is really what matters to me," she added.

Dhruv Kapadia, BU's student body president, said he welcomes Gilliam's intention to focus on students' needs and experiences.

"For BU — an institution that not so long ago was infamous for a very reactionary, white-dominated administration — for this institution to now select a woman of color as its 11th president is refreshing," he said, adding, "I think it's a sign that BU is now going to move into a more progressive student-centered vision."

Gilliam will succeed Robert Brown, who stepped down last May after leading Boston University for 18 years.