Executive Director, Dartmouth Dialogues

Dartmouth College seeks a visionary leader to serve as the next Executive Director (ED) of Dartmouth Dialogues, the College’s flagship program for training future leaders to engage meaningfully across political and personal differences. As a named priority of President Sian Beilock, this role presents an unparalleled opportunity to take one of the top programs of its kind and further grow its impact by developing in students the skills essential for a healthy democracy and advancing the field of constructive dialogue.

In her inaugural address in September 2023, President Beilock named creating brave spaces that allow for constructive dialogue across difference as one of the key priorities of her presidency, and Dartmouth Dialogues is now the primary driver of these efforts. Supported by the College’s tight-knit community, Dartmouth Dialogues has built formal and informal workshops, courses, certificates, and programs that prepare students, faculty, and staff to engage diverse perspectives with empathy, intellectual rigor, and courage. In addition, Dartmouth Dialogues collaborates with research partners on- and off-campus to foster increased understanding of polarization and communication across difference, leads an annual special topic series, and, in the first-ever university-wide partnership with StoryCorps, brought the One Small Step initiative to campus to record conversations between pairs of students, staff, and alumni with opposing views. The early growth and support for Dartmouth Dialogues helped secure a $25M gift from Karen and Jim Frank ’65 and their son Daniel ’92 in May of 2026, one of the largest gifts ever made to support programming and education around civil discourse and the free exchange of ideas at a U.S. university.

The next ED will be charged with envisioning an ambitious next chapter that will increase the impact of Dartmouth Dialogues on campus and beyond. They will lead the Dartmouth Dialogues team in clarifying the initiative’s structure and developing new programming that ensures students have the opportunity to build crucial skills in communication across differences. They will also proactively engage with faculty across disciplines, deepening faculty’s skill in facilitating dialogue while building research partnerships that expand evidence-based work in the field. Finally, they will advance Dartmouth’s reputation and leadership in the field of constructive dialogue, providing thought leadership on- and off-campus, expanding the initiative’s reach to other institutions—including high schools—by communicating the value and impact of the initiative’s work, and securing additional resources to support the effort.

Jeff Kessner is leading this search with Hayden Lizotte and Jenny Rubin.