Penn State President

Neeli Bendapudi, Ph.D., leads an inspired community of Penn State students, faculty, and staff. Driven by a commitment to fostering student success and a sense of belonging for all Penn Staters, President Bendapudi advances the University’s values and land-grant mission of teaching, research, and public service.

President Neeli Bendapudi

Neeli Bendapudi began her tenure as the nineteenth 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.

Her is one where all students have the opportunity to succeed, interdisciplinary research excellence is encouraged and supported, and the University’s land-grant impact is felt deeply within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and beyond. Within the foundation of these efforts, she is committed to fostering diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging and enabling innovative ways of operating to best serve students, faculty, and staff.

Prior to coming to Penn State, Bendapudi was president of the University of Louisville from 2018 to 2022. Among her leadership experiences, she also 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.