Lynn Wooten

President

Simmons University

Lynn Perry Wooten, a seasoned academic and an expert on organizational development and transformation, became the ninth president and first African American to lead Simmons University on July 1, 2020.

Specializing in crisis leadership, diversity and inclusion, and positive leadership—organizational behavior that reveals and nurtures the highest level of human potential—Dr. Wooten is an innovative leader whose research has informed her work in the classroom and as an administrator.

She first joined a university faculty in 1994 and has served in administrative roles since 2008. Dr. Wooten came to Simmons from Cornell University, where she was the David J. Nolan Dean and Professor of Management and Organizations at the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management. She also has had a robust clinical practice, providing leadership development, education, and training for a wide variety of institutions.  

Dr. Wooten is the author of two books, Positive Organizing in a Global Society: Understanding and Engaging Differences for Capacity Building and Inclusion (2016) and Leading Under Pressure: From Surviving to Thriving Before, During, and After a Crisis (2010), nearly 30 journal articles, and more than 15 book chapters.

A graduate of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, where she earned a BS in accounting, Dr. Wooten also holds an MBA from the Duke University Fuqua School of Business, a PhD in business administration from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, and a Certificate in Advanced Educational Leadership from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

Dr. Wooten began her career as assistant professor at the University of Florida Warrington College of Business. In 1998 she returned to the University of Michigan, where she was on the faculty of the Ross School of Business for nearly 20 years and served as Co-Faculty Director of the Center for Positive Organizations, Co-Faculty Director of the Executive Leadership Institute, and Senior Associate Dean for Student and Academic Excellence. She left Michigan in 2017 for the deanship at Cornell.