Judy Olian, Ph.D.
Committees: Audit
Background
Judy D. Olian is President Emerita of Quinnipiac University, having served as the President from 2018 to 2025. Quinnipiac is a comprehensive private university located in Connecticut, offering a transformative educational experience for approximately 9500 undergraduate and graduate students. During her tenure, the university added numerous market-facing programs, hired faculty in cutting-edge fields, and built major facilities that enhanced research, student career readiness, and community well-being. Among the university’s distinctions are the Quinnipiac University Poll, graduates who achieve among the very best employment outcomes in the country, and the 2023 Men’s Ice Hockey National Championship Team!
Before joining Quinnipiac University, she served as dean of UCLA Anderson School of Management and John E. Anderson Chair in Management for over 12 years. Under her leadership, UCLA Anderson hired a record number of faculty, expanded its prestigious Board of Visitors, and raised over $450 million for students and faculty support, innovative programming, and capital improvements.
Prior to that, she was dean and professor of management at the Smeal College of Business Administration at Pennsylvania State University, and professor and senior associate dean at the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. Olian served also as the chairman of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International), the premier business accrediting and management thought leadership organization in the world.
Widely published in journals on human resource management, top management team composition, and the business alignment of management systems, Olian wrote a weekly syndicated newspaper column and hosted a monthly television show on current topics in business. She is a sought-after speaker and provided strategic consulting for major corporations.
Olian serves on, or has been a member of, various not-for-profit boards including the U.S. Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, Peking University Business School’s International Advisory Board, the Connecticut Workforce Council, the Business-Higher Education Forum, New Haven Promise, Hartford Healthcare, Catalyst -- a leading global think tank for women in business, WARF – the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, and the Knight Commission on Inter-Collegiate Athletics that advocates for the well-being and success of college athletes. She was also Chairman of the Loeb Awards for Business Journalism, and chaired the Division I MAAC conference – the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. Appointed by Connecticut’s Governor, she is Co-Chair of AdvanceCT, the business attraction and retention organization for the State of Connecticut.
Olian is a member of the corporate boards of Ares Management, L.P., a publicly traded global alternative asset management firm, United Therapeutics, a publicly traded advanced biotech company, and Mattel, Inc., a publicly traded multinational toy manufacturing and entertainment company.
Born and raised in Australia, Olian received her B.S. in Psychology from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Industrial Relations from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Other Current Public Company Boards
Ares Management, L.P.
Mattel, Inc.