UERU 2026 Leadership Summit

Brian Rosenberg is currently visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. From 2003 until 2020, he served as the 16th President of Macalester College. He is the author of Whatever It Is, I'm Against It: Resistance to Change in Higher Education, published in 2023 by Harvard Education Press. His articles on higher education appear regularly in The Chronicle of Higher Education and have also appeared in publications including The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. He serves as senior advisor and director at the African Leadership University and as a member of the board of the Teagle Foundation. Rosenberg received his B.A. from Cornell University and his Ph.D. in English from Columbia University. Prior to arriving at Macalester, he served as dean of the faculty at Lawrence University and as professor and chair of the English Department at Allegheny College. He is the author of two books and many articles on Victorian literature.

Ellucian, the leading higher education technology company powering institutions around the world, today announced the appointment of Daniel Greenstein, Ph.D., as Chief of Industry Transformation. Reporting directly to President and CEO Laura Ipsen as part of the Office of the CEO, Greenstein will lead Ellucian’s higher education system strategy and drive collaboration with state systems, policymakers, and institutional networks to accelerate transformation across the global education landscape.

Greenstein brings extensive experience from both public higher education and philanthropy. Most recently, he served as Chancellor of Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education (PASSHE), where he led a bold system redesign that improved access, affordability, and student outcomes across 10 universities. Earlier in his career, he led the Postsecondary Success program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and served as Vice Provost at the University of California Office of the President, advancing system-wide initiatives in research, online learning, and data analytics.

"At a pivotal moment for higher education, Dan joins Ellucian with unmatched experience leading large-scale transformation," said Laura Ipsen, President and CEO of Ellucian. "His leadership and deep understanding of how systems evolve will strengthen our partnerships with states, systems, and policymakers, and help institutions modernize faster on the path to SaaS. Dan's expertise aligns perfectly with our mission to power higher education so institutions can empower student success."

At Ellucian, Greenstein will work closely with the company’s product, strategy, and go-to-market teams to guide modernization efforts and ensure technology enables institutional sustainability, innovation, and student success.

"I'm tremendously excited to join Ellucian — an organization that shares my lifelong passion for higher education and my commitment to ensuring it remains a sustainable, affordable, and powerful engine of workforce development, social mobility, and knowledge creation," said Daniel Greenstein. "Ellucian's tools and services provide the essential infrastructure and innovation support that colleges and universities need now more than ever to serve students, communities, employers, and the nation."

Peter McPherson is president emeritus of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), having retired in September 2022. Since becoming president in January 2006, McPherson helped cultivate a vibrant and collaborative public higher education community aimed at driving equitable student success; fostering research and innovation to meet societal needs, and deepening community and economic engagement to benefit all.

Before leading APLU, McPherson served as president of Michigan State University from 1993 to 2004. Before being named president of Michigan State University, McPherson was a Group Executive Vice President at Bank of America. During the Reagan administration, McPherson served as Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury from 1987 to 1989. Before his work at the Treasury Department, McPherson served as Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) from 1981 to 1987. Prior to leading USAID, McPherson was the managing partner of the Washington office of the law firm Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease. He also served as Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of the Office of Presidential Personnel during the Ford administration.

McPherson has served as Chair of the Board of Directors at Dow Jones and Company, as Chair of the Board for Harvest Plus, and he was Co-founder and Chair of the Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa. McPherson is also the former Chair of Abraham Lincoln Study Abroad Commission. He was a Board of Trustees member for the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation.

McPherson holds a bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University, an M.B.A. from Western Michigan University, and a J.D. from American University.

Lynn Pasquerella was appointed president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities in 2016, after serving as the eighteenth president of Mount Holyoke College. She has held positions as Provost at the University of Hartford and Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Rhode Island, where she taught for more than two decades. A philosopher whose work has combined teaching and scholarship with local and global engagement, Pasquerella has written extensively on medical ethics, metaphysics, public policy, and the philosophy of law. Her most recent book, What We Value: Public Health, Social Justice, and Educating for Democracy, examines the role of higher education in addressing some of the most pressing contemporary issues at the intersection of ethics, law, and public policy. Pasquerella is immediate past president of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and the host of Northeast Public Radio’s The Academic Minute.

She is a graduate of Quinebaug Valley Community College, Mount Holyoke College, and Brown University. Her awards and honors include receiving the President’s Award and Judith Krug Medal from Phi Beta Kappa; the William Rogers Award and the Horace Mann Medal from Brown University; the STAR Scholars Network North Star Lifetime Achievement Award; Mary Baldwin University’s Algernon Sydney Sullivan Service to Humanity Award; the Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences Advocacy Award; Quinebaug Valley Community College Champions Award; and the Mount Holyoke Alumni Association’s Elizabeth Topham Kennan Award. Pasquerella holds honorary degrees from Elizabethtown College, Bishop’s University, the University of South Florida, the University of Hartford, the University of Rhode Island, Concordia College, Mount Holyoke College, Bay Path University, and St. Mary’s College and was named by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education as one of America’s top 35 women leaders. She serves on the boards of the Lingnan Foundation, the National Trust for the Humanities, the Coalition for the Common Good, and Handshake.

Sarah Newman is a researcher, educator, and creative leader working at the intersection of AI, ethics, and education. As the Director of Art & Education at Harvard’s metaLAB within the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, she leads an interdisciplinary portfolio that brings critical, human-centered perspectives into conversations about emerging technologies. She also holds an appointment as an Assistant Professor of Education at Western Norway University, where she is helping design and teach courses on AI for teacher education. Her work broadly asks how AI systems both shape and are shaped by our values, institutions, and everyday experiences.

She is the Founder & Project Lead of the AI Pedagogy Project–a widely used public resource that helps educators engage AI thoughtfully and responsibly in their teaching. Since launching in 2023, the project has reached over 200,000 people worldwide and is used and cited by institutions of higher education, public interest organizations, and governmental bodies. Newman also co-founded the Data Nutrition Project, a nonprofit initiative focused on improving transparency and equity in data-driven systems, and more recently launched the Public AI Summit, a free, online event designed to make AI knowledge accessible to broad public audiences.

Across her work, Newman combines collaborative research, curriculum design, and public programming to create spaces where people can critically and creatively engage with technology. Trained in philosophy and imaging arts (BA, Washington University in St. Louis; MFA, Rochester Institute of Technology), her focus remains on building practical tools and inclusive learning experiences for a rapidly changing technological landscape. Previous honors include: Harvard Assembly Fellow, Harvard Berkman Klein Fellow, Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio AI Resident, Artist-in-Residence at Northeastern School of Law, Notre Dame Tech Ethics grant recipient, National Endowment of the Arts grant recipient, and winner of the Ars Electronica Award for Digital Humanity.