University Town Hall on Oct. 13: Welcoming Fielding’s New Provost Dr. Wendi Williams

President Katrina S. Rogers, Ph.D., invites Fielding Graduate University’s alums, students, faculty, staff, and prospective students to a University Town Hall on Oct. 13 to announce the appointment of Fielding’s new provost. The town hall will take place 9-10 a.m. Pacific/12-1 p.m. Eastern.

This University Town Hall will introduce Wendi Williams, Ph.D., Provost and Senior Vice President, to the Fielding community. Dr. Williams will begin the provost position on Oct. 11 and brings many years of academic and administrative experience — as well as a scholarly background — to this important role at Fielding.

As a psychologist, advocate, and educator, Dr. Williams applies her work at the intersection of education and psychology to her scholarship and leadership praxis. Dr. Williams completed her undergraduate studies at the University of California, Davis, where she majored in psychology and minored in African and African American Studies. She completed her graduate study at Pepperdine University (MA in Psychology) and Georgia State University, where she earned a doctorate in counseling psychology, with an emphasis on multicultural psychology and family systems. Learn more about Dr. Williams below.

“As Fielding’s Provost and Senior Vice President, Dr. Williams will play a vital role in upholding our university’s educational integrity and supporting its vision while ensuring our students have the best educational experience,” Fielding Board Chair Karen S. Bogart, Ph.D., said. “Dr. Williams embodies the scholar and practitioner values of our university, advocating for a just and sustainable world in her research and practice. On behalf of the Board of Trustees, I express a warm welcome to Dr. Williams.”

Join Fielding in welcoming Dr. Williams to our community on Oct. 13 at 9-10 a.m. Pacific/12-1 p.m. Eastern!

Questions? Contact us at media@fielding.edu.

Dr. Wendi Williams
Provost and Senior Vice President,
Fielding Graduate University  

Wendi Williams, Ph.D.

Psychologist, advocate, and educator, Dr. Wendi Williams applies her work at the intersection of education and psychology to her scholarship and leadership praxis. Williams completed undergraduate studies at the University of California, Davis where she majored in psychology and minored in African and African American Studies. She completed graduate study at Pepperdine University (MA in Psychology) and Georgia State University, where she earned a doctorate in counseling psychology, with an emphasis in multicultural psychology and family systems. 

In a career spanning two decades, Williams’ work delves into the contours of Black women’s and girls’ inner lives, leveraging deep knowledge of their interiority as source content for the development of culturally-responsive educational and psychological interventions. Applying critical lenses of liberation psychology and Womanist, Black, and Intersectional feminist theoretical frames with an equity-centered systems power analysis, Williams develops and implements educational, wellness, and leadership intervention programming with individuals, groups, and organizations. Her work attends to the individual and organizational transformation required to foment the optimal growth and development of diverse women and girls, while attending to the organizational and societal systems-level change required for sustainable equity practice.  

As a scholar-practitioner, Dr. Williams’ research and practice inform her leadership practice in higher education contexts. Most recently, in her role as Dean of the School of Education at Mills College, and prior as Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at Bank Street College, Graduate School of Education, she utilized her role to cultivate equitable contexts for student, staff, and faculty development while attending to structural and cultural change to support important curricular and program development. Prior to these roles she provided academic leadership as program coordinator and department chair for the Counseling and School Psychology at Long Island University in Brooklyn, NY where she also served as Vice President of the University Faculty Senate and Representative of the School of Education on the university’s Union Executive Committee.   

Dr. Williams has made significant scholarly contributions in the field through authored and edited works as well as conference presentations of her research and analysis, and professional development curricula and workshops. With her recently published edited book, WE Matter!: Intersectional Anti-Racist Feminist Interventions with Black Girls and Women and forthcoming books, Black Women at Work: On Refusal and Recovery and The Majestic Place: The Freedom Possible in Black Women’s Leadership, she keeps these conversations in the discourse.   

Of late, she has become more interested in “diminishing the paywall” between the work she engages for and about diverse girls’ and women’s lives and the actual communities that can benefit from this work. To this end, she engages in popular media as well as scholarly journals and books to ensure her work is accessible to members of the public and the professionals who will serve them.  

Dr. Williams leverages her background and platform to lead organizations that support the optimal development of vulnerable communities, especially societal challenges that can be enriched by diverse women’s unique perspectives and approaches to leadership. Some examples include serving as co-chair of the Board for Girls Leadership, an organization that teaches girls to exercise the power of their voice through programs grounded in social-emotional learning; and serving in multiple roles, including as president for the Society for the Psychology of Women (SPW), Division 35 of the American Psychological Association (APA). She is currently their representative on the APA Council of Representatives.  

In her down time, Dr. Williams enjoys time at the ocean and hiking among the Redwoods local to her Bay Area home in Oakland, CA. A true bibliophile and lover of words, she is an avid reader and occasional poet, with a deep appreciation for stories that center the inner lives and intimacies of Black, Indigenous and Folx of Color characters. Among all the titles and roles she holds, she is most honored to be “Auntie Wendi”, which allows her to dote on her nieces, nephew, and godsons coming of age in Arizona, New York, Washington D.C., and Japan. Nurturing the lives of these children while being a generous human to her family and community rank among her highest life priorities.