Neeli Bendapudi

President, The Pennsylvania State University

An ex officio and non-voting member of the Board of Trustees, Neeli Bendapudi was appointed 19th president of Penn State on May 9, 2022. With a nearly thirty-year career as a leader in higher education and business, Bendapudi is a dedicated educator, academic, and executive. She leads Penn State’s twenty-four-campus network and top-ranked online World Campus with a focus on advancing excellence and creating opportunities for students, faculty, and staff to thrive.

Prior to coming to Penn State, Bendapudi was president of the University of Louisville, where she oversaw a series of transformative efforts spanning academics; finance; the health enterprise, philanthropy; athletics; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and more.

Among her leadership experiences, Bendapudi has served as provost and executive vice chancellor at the University of Kansas, dean of the School of Business at the University of Kansas, and as founding director of the Initiative for Managing Services at the Ohio State University. In addition to consulting for some of the world’s largest companies and organizations, she was the executive vice president and chief customer officer for Huntington National Bank.

With a research background in the study of consumer behavior in service contexts, she has taught marketing at a variety of higher education institutions and been honored for contributions in her field at both the national and university level. Bendapudi earned her bachelor’s degree in English and MBA from Andhra University in India and her doctorate in marketing from the University of Kansas.