Wellesley College Names 14th President

WELLESLEY, MA - Wellesley College has named its 14th president.

Dr. Paula Johnson, a professor and faculty member at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, will be Wellesley College’s first African American president, the college announced Thursday.

Johnson serves as chief of the Division of Women’s Health at Harvard Medical School and Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where she founded and is executive director of the Connors Center for Women’s Health and Gender Biology.

“My life has been devoted to women; to their health, to their education and to their development. And really that is what calls me to Wellesley,” Johnson told students Shivani Kuckreja and Charlotte Harris, who are both members of the search committee, in an interview at her home.

Johnson attended Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, and she received her M.D. and M.P.H. degrees from Harvard. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, one of the highest honors in the fields of health, and recognized as a national leader in medicine by the National Library of Medicine. Additionally, Johnson was a 2015 honoree of the International Women’s Forum.

Wellesley’s new president is not only committed to women’s health and education, she is also optimistic about the future of women’s success as a whole.

“Today is a moment in time when women’s leadership is finally being recognized as transformative to the world,” Johnson said in the interview.

Johnson lives in Brookline with her husband, their son and daughter, and a Havanese puppy.

See the full interview with Dr. Paula Johnson here >>>

Photo via Wellesley College