Ilene H. Nagel, Ph.D.


Emeritus Trustee


Ilene H. Nagel, Ph.D., is president of Education Executives LLC, a consulting firm specializing in the search for AAU university presidents, provosts, and deans, as well as the search for senior leaders of distinguished scientific organizations, especially academic medical centers and hospital CEOs. Consulting services also are provided for those in senior leadership positions. From 2005 to 2016, Nagel led the higher education practice for Russell Reynolds Associates.

Prior to joining Russell Reynolds Associates as a managing director, she was the senior advisor to the University of California senior vice president for academic affairs and provost, and to the office of the president of the University of California System. Before joining the University of California office of the president, Nagel was the executive vice chancellor (chief academic officer) of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and before that, dean of the graduate school and associate provost for research at the University of Maryland, College Park. She served for two decades as a full-time professor of law at Indiana University-Bloomington, with visiting appointments as a Guggenheim Fellow at Yale Law School, as a fellow at Cambridge University, as a professor of law at Columbia University School of Law, and as a professor of law at the George Washington University School of Law. From 1985 to 1994, Nagel was a presidential appointee in the federal judiciary, where she served full time as a commissioner on the United States Sentencing Commission. Nagel was elected to the USA Funds board in 2000.

Nagel earned her Master of Legal Studies degree from Stanford Law School and her Master of Arts and Ph.D. from New York University. She also serves on the board of CGS, a wholly owned subsidiary of Blue Cross/Blue Shield of South Carolina, and on the boards of the Birnam Wood Golf Club and the Cape Ann Museum.