Mary Schmidt Campbell, Ph.D., is president emerita of Spelman College, a top 40 liberal arts college. Dedicated to the education and global leadership of Black women, the college graduates more Black women who earn PhDs in STEM fields than any other college in the nation. While at Spelman, Dr. Campbell concluded the most successful fundraising campaign in the school’s history. The campaign’s success tripled the number of full scholarships and substantively expanded the schools curricular offerings including, eSpelman for adult learners, Center for Black Entrepreneurship, the Spelman Innovation Lab, Documentary filmmaking and a new, 80,000 sq.ft. Center for Innovation and the Arts. 

Before coming to Spelman, Dr. Campbell served for over two decades as dean of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. During her tenure she co-founded and developed a number of new fields of study including the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, the NYU Design Center, and graduate programs in Archiving and Digital Preservation and a MBA/MFA in film and film producing.  
 
An art historian and former curator, Campbell began her career in New York as executive director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, the country’s first accredited Black fine arts museum and a linchpin in the redevelopment of the 125th street corridor. She then served as commissioner of New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs and in 2009, President Barack Obama appointed her vice chair of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and currently sits on the boards of the Doris Duke Foundation, Unity Technologies, the Getty Trust, The Public Theater, and Juilliard. She also serves as a member of the UBS Americas Advisory Council. 
 
She continues to lecture widely on art, culture and higher education and to publish in those fields, including a biography on the Black artist Romare Bearden (Oxford, 2018). 

Campbell received a B.A. degree in English literature from Swarthmore College, an M.A in art history from Syracuse University, and a doctorate in humanities from Syracuse. She and her husband, Dr. George Campbell Jr., president emeritus of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, are the parents of three sons and have eight grandchildren. They currently live in Big Sky, Montana, and maintain a residence in Harlem.