First Woman President of HBCU Miles College is a Lawyer and Former Utility Executive

In 2019 lawyer Bobbie Knight was appointed as the first woman president of Miles College in Alabama. She was initially appointed as interim president and then in 2020 she was appointed as the permanent president. The College has extended Prior to her appointment she had retired in 2016 as an executive of the Alabama Power Company where she spent 37 years in various leadership roles including Vice President of the Birmingham Division, Vice President of Public Relations and General Manager of Supply Chain. Knight considers one of the highlights of her corporate career as being selected, “…as one of 21 women worldwide for the acclaimed Leadership Foundation Fellows Program of the International Women’s Forum. This program afforded her the opportunity to study at Harvard University and the Judge School of Business at Cambridge in the United Kingdom.”

In announcing a contract extension, the Board of Trustees Chair noted about Knight, “Her strategic approach to goal-setting, her extensive corporate experience, and her warm and engaging personality are assets that have already benefited the college. We look forward to new initiatives that she will launch to assure Miles College students receive a quality education and college experience.” According to a news article so far, “During Knight’s tenure as president, the college has experienced two consecutive years of enrollment increases. Also, under Knight’s leadership, the college has had an increase of over 500 percent in private gifts and more than 1100 percent in public and foundation gifts. The college also increased its endowment to an all-time high and has been rated one of the top 10 most fiscally stable Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the nation.”

Knight is accessible and dedicated to the Miles College students, encouraging them to text her and to reach out on social media, describing herself as a mother figure or even grandmother figure for those who many not have the privilege of that relationship at home.

President Knight had been appointed to the Miles College Board of Trustees in 2017. Membership in Boards of Trustees has been another pathway for lawyers to the campus presidency, and indeed that was how Knight was tapped. She is CEO of her own company, Bobbie Knight Consulting, and is chair of the Board of Managers for the Birmingham Times Media Group and currently treasurer of the Birmingham Airport Authority (she also served as vice chair and chair).

She earned her JD from Birmingham School of Law. She also completed Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management Executive Leadership Program.

Lawyer Colleen Hanycz is the 1st Woman and 1st Layperson to Lead Two Religiously Affiliated Campuses

When Colleen M. Hanycz assumed the presidency of Xavier University in July 2021(Cinncinati,OH), is was the second time she was experienced being the first woman and first layperson to lead a campus, having previously served as president of La Salle University (Philadelphia, PA). Hanycz also served a seven-year tenure as principal (president) of a third religiously affiliated school, Brescia University College, a Catholic women’s college (in the Ursuline tradition) in Ontario, Canada.

After earning her law degree at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Colleen Hanycz practiced in the areas of securities and employment litigation in Toronto, Canada with the firm of Heenan Blaikie LLP. She decided to pursue her academic interests, completing an LL.M. and a Ph.D. in law at York University . She was an associate professor at Osgoode Hall Law School where she taught Civil Procedure and Dispute Resolution before assuming the presidency at Brescia University College.

While at Brescia University College, among other things, Hanycz, “focused considerable efforts on the opportunity to enhance women’s representation both on corporate boards and across C-suite appointments, including service on a federal roundtable sponsored by the Canadian government.”

During an interview early in her tenure at LaSalle, she noted that it has been a challenge in the community as the first lay person and first woman at LaSalle – which did not begin accepted woman students until 1970. She noted that women make up 60% of the student body at LaSalle and that they have been welcoming her and indicating she is a role model. When asked about how she could bring the enrollment success she had a Brescia to LaSalle, she observed that at a lot of religiously affiliated schools (e.g., the Christian Brothers) stay quieter and don’t really tell their story. She noted in the higher education landscape of today, it is time to get the word out about religious affiliated schools.

At Xavier, like LaSalle, women were not admitted to the University until 1969 (a year earlier than LaSalle). Hanycz noted that “Catholic higher education is becoming more and more open to diversity.” Hanycz has easily navigated from an Ursuline affiliated school, to a LaSallian Christian Brothers school and now to a Jesuit institution.

Criminal Justice Scholar and Former Law Dean Nora V. Demleitner is St. John’s First Female President

When the Board of Visitors appointed Nora V. Demleitner as the first woman President in late 2021, she assumed office in 2022 as the 25th Annapolis president in the college’s 325-year history. St. John’s College is the third oldest college in the United States, and it did not start admitting women until 1951. It was established in 1696 as King William’s School and chartered in 1784 as St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland

Described by CIO Views as one of the 10 Most Influential Women Leaders in Education to follow in 2022, in an interview with the magazine she noted that when she first entered the education field, she said that she thought she would be a faculty member and teach and write about law for the rest of her career, never thinking about becoming a college president. In reflecting on how her experience as a law school dean served her well for the role of campus president, Demleitner noted, “Being a law school dean includes overseeing admissions and financial aid, the budget, and the curriculum…I had a lot of administrative experience before coming to St. John’s.” The interview also had her reflect on the topic of women presidents. She said, “It’s an interesting journey, and as much as I think the U.S. prides itself on gender equality and has made incredible strides in that direction, certainly women still get treated somewhat differently from men,..With the increase in the number of female presidents, board members, and philanthropists, the world is certainly changing, but challenges remain for women.” She explained that women leaders have to navigate things differently and that sometimes people underestimate what they are capable of. She stated, “You have to make people understand that you can read a budget sheet or are able to do things that are often ascribed to men,”

Prior to joining the St. John's College, Demleitner has served as the first woman dean of both Hofstra Law School and Washington and Lee University School of Law. She is a noted scholar and expert in criminal law, and is the editor of the Federal Sentencing Reporter, and served on the executive editorial board of the American Journal of Comparative Law. She is the lead author of Sentencing Law and Policy, a major casebook on sentencing law, published by Wolters Kluwer/Aspen Law & Business. Nora Demleitner is an elected member of the International Academy of Comparative Law, the American Law Institute, the European Law Institute, and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.

She received her J.D. from Yale and her LL.M. from Georgetown in international and comparative law. Following graduation from law school, Demleitner clerked for the Hon. Samuel A. Alito, Jr., then a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She also testified before Congress during Justice Alito’s confirmation hearings for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Nora Demleitner began her career in academia at St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio. She was a senior research fellow at SUNY Buffalo’s Baldy Center, and the Boden Visitor at Marquette Law School. She also taught at the University of Michigan Law School and St. Thomas University School of Law in Miami, as well as in Europe at the University of Freiburg, Germany and the Sant’ Anna Institute of Advanced Research in Pisa, Italy. Multiple times she was a visiting researcher at the Max-Planck-Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Germany.

St. John’s College opened a second campus in Santa Fe in 1964 and some of their prior presidents, Chris Nelson and Mark Roosevelt were attorneys.