Paul LeBlanc

Dr. Paul J. LeBlanc is a Visiting Scholar and Special Advisor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. He was the co-founder and Board Chair for Matter and Space, focusing on AI and Education, leaving that role in October of 2025. From 2003 to 2024, he served as President of Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU). Under the 21 years of Paul’s direction, SNHU grew from 2800 students to over 250,000 and is now the largest non-profit provider of online higher education in the country.Paul is considered one of America’s most innovative educators. Forbes Magazine has listed him as one of its 15 “Classroom Revolutionaries” and Washington Monthly named him one of America’s ten most innovative university presidents. In 2012, SNHU was #12 on Fast Company magazine’s “World’s Fifty Most Innovative Companies” list and was the only university included. In 2018, Paul won the prestigious IAA Institute Hesburgh Award for Leadership Excellence in Higher Education, joining some of the most respected university and college presidents in American higher education. In 2024 the University of Pennsylvania awarded him The Zemsky Medal for Innovation in Higher Education. He has also received the Ernest L. Boyer Award (NACU), the Distinguished Alumnus Award (AASCU), and the Ray Schroeder Leadership Award (UPCEA). He has honorary degrees from Coventry University (UK), University Camilo José Cela (Spain), and Westfield State University (US).He is a frequently requested speaker internationally and often quoted in the media. He is the author of Students First: Equity, Access, and Opportunity in Higher Education (2021), winner of the 2022 Phillip E. Frandson Award for Literature, and Broken: How are Social Systems Are Failing Us and How We Can Fix Them (2022). His 2015 series of innovation columns for EDUCAUSE Review won an APEX Award for excellent in magazine writing. Currently completing a book on Artificial Intelligence and Education for Wiley Publishing, under contract for 2026.He served as Senior Policy Advisor to Under Secretary Ted Mitchell at the US Department of Education, working on competency-based education, new accreditation pathways, and innovation. He also served on the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI), the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s Board on Higher Education and Workforce, the AGB President’s Council, the NEASC (now NECHE) Commission, and the Board of the American Council on Education, which he chaired, as well as various corporate boards and advisory committees.Paul immigrated to the United States as a child, was the first person in his extended family to attend college, and is a graduate of Framingham State University (BA), Boston College (MA), and the University of Massachusetts (PhD). From 1993 to 1996 he directed a technology start up for Houghton Mifflin Publishing Company, was President of Marlboro College (VT) from 1996 to 2003, and became President of SNHU in 2003. His wife Patricia is an attorney and they have two daughters, Emma and Hannah, and a new grandson Simon, who shows early signs of genius.