Vanessa Kahen

With over 25 years of experience in public higher education, Dr. Vanessa Kahen is a student-centered, collaborative, and equity-minded leader with demonstrated success providing strategic leadership within a shared governance environment. At West Chester University (WCU), she served as interim Dean of the Graduate School, Chair of the Psychology Department, and Director of Moon Shot for Equity. Throughout all these roles, she worked across the institution and within collective bargaining agreements to facilitate complex institutional change, supporting faculty and staff, and increasing students’ social and economic mobility. She headed the development and implementation of a new Doctor of Psychology program and training clinic providing supervised clinical training for Psy.D. students and affordable mental health care to the community. As Director of Moon Shot for Equity, she worked closely with colleagues across all university divisions to align student success policies and practices with WCU’s institutional mission and strategic plan. Dr. Kahen has a relational leadership style. She is a flexible, strategic leader with strong creative problem-solving skills; she works well with a variety of stakeholders, and she sees innovation and change as welcome opportunities. Dr. Kahen earned her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. She studies risk and protective factors for social and emotional wellbeing during the transition to college.