Leadership Team Announcement

To the Emerson community:

I am excited to announce that Dr. Jon Derek Croteau, a 1998 Emerson graduate who has served in senior strategic roles in industry and higher education, has accepted my offer to join the College as our new Vice President of Strategy, Innovation, and Institutional Initiatives. He will begin at Emerson on July 15, 2024.

Jon has extensive experience working closely with higher education boards, executives, and leadership teams. Most recently, he served in a transitional appointment as Senior Associate Vice President of Administration and Chief of Staff for Washington State University’s Foundation, where he helped develop their strategic plan. He previously led Northwestern’s New York regional center and served in leadership roles at Carnegie Mellon, and Boston University. He is also a Fellow at the Institute for Inclusive Leadership at Simmons University. At consulting firms Lindauer and WittKieffer, he focused on higher education, healthcare, and other not-for-profits, Jon has advised executives and boards across the globe on effective strategic planning, advancement, talent management, human resources initiatives, diversity, equity, and inclusion, organizational structure and design, and executive searches. 

Jon is the author of several books, including Effective Measures: The Return on Investing in Strategic Talent Management, Making the Case for Leadership: Profiles of Chief Advancement Officers in Higher Education, and his Amazon best-selling memoir, My Thinning Years: Starving the Gay Within. He has published poems, articles, and essays in outlets including Huffington Post, Insight into Diversity, Inside Higher Education, The Good Men Project, and the International Journal for Educational Advancement. 

Jon has deep ties to Emerson, where he earned a BA in Writing, Literature and Publishing and attended Kasteel Well. He earned a master’s from Northwestern. While studying for his doctorate in educational leadership and administration at Boston University, he worked in Emerson’s Office of Institutional Advancement. He has served on Emerson’s Alumni Association Board of Directors and established the Justin P. and Jon Derek Croteau Scholarship Fund for Kasteel Well in Honor of Dulcia Meijers. 

“Emerson College changed my life. The College accepted me and enabled me to thrive as an honors student and a human being,” Jon said. “Working closely with President Bernhardt and serving as Vice President of Strategy, Innovation, and Institutional Initiatives is the perfect way to capstone my career and give back even more to the place that has given me so much.” 

Please join me in congratulating Jon on this appointment and welcoming him back to Emerson! 

Sincerely,
Jay M. Bernhardt
President