Judith Rodin is a pioneer, innovator, change-maker, and global thought-leader. For two decades, she taught and mentored Yale undergraduate and graduate students, many of whom attribute their careers to her early influence. A research psychologist by training, she led an active lab at Yale and is considered one of the founders of the fields of behavioral medicine and health psychology. Her work focused on the intersection of psychological, behavioral and physiological variables and, with her colleagues at Yale, she studied obesity, eating disorders, stress and coping, and aging. Dr. Rodin was the Philip R. Allen Professor of Psychology as well as Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry at Yale, a unique set of joint appointments that reflected her groundbreaking impact on promoting interdisciplinary work at Yale and around the world.
Dr. Rodin also served Yale as Psychology Department Chair, Dean of the Graduate School and Provost, forging a leadership path for women at Yale and nationally. When she was recruited to become President of the University of Pennsylvania –her alma mater– she became the first woman to lead an Ivy League university. She is credited with a transformational role at Penn, introducing a College House system, a significant number of cross-school, interdisciplinary undergraduate degree programs and an award-winning intervention aimed at restoring the disadvantaged neighborhoods of West Philadelphia physically and economically.
Her leadership as President of The Rockefeller Foundation ushered in a new era of strategic philanthropy that emphasized large-scale partnerships with business and government to address and solve for the complex challenges of the 21st century, and championed two new fields that are at the forefront of current thinking: resilience and impact investing.
Dr. Rodin has served as a board member of nine leading public companies, including Citigroup, Comcast and Aetna, as well as numerous venture-capital backed startups, and several nonprofits including The Brookings Institution, Carnegie Hall and The New World Symphony. She is the recipient of 19 honorary doctorate degrees, many other prestigious honors, and is a sought-after speaker for influential global forums including The World Economic Forum, the United Nations General Assembly and the Vatican Global Forum.
Dr. Rodin has authored more than 200 academic articles and chapters, and has written or co-written 15 books, including “The Resilience Dividend: Being Strong in a World Where Things Go Wrong,” and her latest entitled “Making Money Moral: How a New Wave of Visionaries is Linking Purpose and Profit.”
