Photo by by Tony Rinaldo

Administrative Dean

Administrative dean Helen Ouellette, who joined the Radcliffe Institute in September 2008, helps dean Barbara J. Grosz oversee administrative areas such as operations and finance and align them with Radcliffe’s programmatic agenda and academic mission. With a distinguished career in administration, Ouellette’s leadership in higher education includes chief financial roles at Williams College and the New England Conservatory in Boston. From 1998 to 2005, she was vice president for administration and treasurer for Williams, where she oversaw finance, human resources, facilities, construction and planning, and other areas. She served from 1992 to 1998 as the vice president of finance and administration at the New England Conservatory. Most recently, Ouellette served in chief operating roles at Earthwatch Institute, the world’s largest environmental volunteer not-for-profit, and at Oxfam America, an international relief and development organization.

Familiar with the Radcliffe and Harvard communities, Ouellette worked in finance at Radcliffe and the Harvard Kennedy School in the late 1980s and early 1990s, earned her PhD in classical philology at Harvard in 1971, and received a certificate in business from Harvard in 1981. For nearly a decade, Ouellette was a member of the faculty and chair of the Classics Department at Union College in New York. She also has experience in community relations and helping plan collaborative university initiatives, with professional activities that include serving as president of the Williamstown Chamber of Commerce and chair of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.