Sian Beilock

Dr. Sian Leah Beilock is the 19th President of Dartmouth. Since her arrival in 2023, President Beilock has positioned Dartmouth as a global leader on the most consequential issues in higher education and beyond. She led the Ivy League in reinstating standardized testing as part of a holistic admissions process and dramatically expanded affordability for middle-income families. Under her leadership, she launched Dartmouth Dialogues, a nationally recognized initiative fostering skills needed to bridge political and personal divides. In 2024, she introduced a first-of-its-kind policy of institutional restraint—where leadership and academic departments refrain from taking political positions so that free expression and debate among students and faculty can flourish without institutional pressure. President Beilock committed to the single largest investment in Dartmouth's residential learning experience in more than a generation, launched the Dartmouth Center for Career Design to transform how students connect to purpose and opportunity, and expanded mental health support across the university. The first woman elected president of Dartmouth in its 256-year history, President Beilock is a distinguished cognitive scientist and one of the world's foremost experts on performance under pressure. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the National Academy of Medicine. She has authored 120 peer-reviewed papers and two acclaimed books—Choke and How the Body Knows Its Mind. Her 2017 TED talk has been viewed nearly 3 million times. She also serves as an External Director on the Bridgewater Associates Board of Directors.