Agenda at a glance

Dr. Lynn Perry Wooten
President, Simmons University

We are honored to welcome Dr. Lynn Perry Wooten as the keynote speaker for HERU 2026. A nationally recognized expert in leadership, crisis management, and organizational development, Dr. Wooten brings deep insight and real-world perspective to the conversation about where higher education is headed next.

She currently serves as the ninth president of Simmons University and is the first African American to lead the institution. Throughout her career, she has championed inclusive leadership and organizational transformation in both academic and corporate settings.

Dr. Wooten previously served as the David J. Nolan Dean at Cornell University’s Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management and spent nearly two decades at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. She is the author of several influential books, including the Wall Street Journal best-seller Arrive and Thrive: 7 Impactful Practices for Women Navigating Leadership.

She is a past recipient of the University of Michigan Ross School of Business’s BBA Student Award for Teaching Excellence as well as the school’s Andy Andrews Distinguished Service Award. She also was chosen as a “Next Generation Business Thinker” by the Financial Times.

With research, writing, and teaching rooted in purpose-driven leadership, Dr. Wooten is a dynamic voice at the intersection of innovation, equity, and impact.

Michael M. Crow
President
Arizona State University

Michael M. Crow is an educator, knowledge enterprise architect, science and technology policy scholar and higher education leader. He became the sixteenth president of Arizona State University in 2002 and has led ASU’s rapid and groundbreaking transformation into one of the world’s best public metropolitan research universities. As a model “New American University,” ASU simultaneously demonstrates comprehensive excellence, inclusivity representative of the ethnic and socioeconomic spectrum of the United States, and consequential societal impact.

Lauded as the “No.1 most innovative school” in the nation by U.S. News & World Report for eleven consecutive years, and garnering top accolades for its global impact and student employability, ASU is a student-centric, technology-enabled public enterprise focused on global challenges that grew its research expenditures more than eight-fold since 2003 and earned AAU membership in 2023. Under Crow’s leadership, it has established more than thirty new transdisciplinary schools, including the School of Earth and Space Exploration, the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the School of Human Evolution and Social Change, and launched pioneering multidisciplinary initiatives including the Biodesign Institute, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, the nation’s first School of Sustainability, and significant initiatives in the humanities and social sciences.