Vice-Provost for Academic Affairs

Loretta O’DONNELL

Dr. Loretta O’Donnell was appointed as the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at Nazarbayev University in August 2013. She also served as an Interim Provost at Nazarbayev University from May to September 2016.

As the Vice-Provost for Academic Affairs, Dr. O’Donnell coordinates with the Deans in developing international quality academic systems for educational programs. She liaises with Nazarbayev University strategic partners in implementing the mission of the University and sharing the experience with local and regional universities.

She has over twenty years of experience in teaching Executive MBA, postgraduate and undergraduate business students in the Australian School of Business, University of New South Wales (UNSW) located in Sydney, Australia. UNSW is a research-intensive university with 52,000 students from over 100 countries. Their MBA program has been ranked in the global top 50 programs for the past seven years. As an elected faculty member of the UNSW Academic Board, she combined academic policy development and implementation with her teaching, learning and research interests. 
Dr. O’Donnell has won awards for her research on human capital analysis in financial markets. Previously, she consulted in organizational change for a large global firm in Sydney and Chicago, and in a boutique firm specializing in developing management systems to sustain change. Her academic qualifications include Ph.D. in Management (Macquarie Graduate School of Management); MBA (AGSM, UNSW), Graduate Diploma in Education and Bachelor of Arts (Honours) (N’cle).