Melissa K. Trotta, Ed.D., joined AGB Search as Associate Managing Principal in 2017. She spent more than 25 years in higher education administration at universities including Harvard, Georgetown, and Johns Hopkins in leadership roles that spanned admissions and enrollment, program management, executive education, and strategic planning. Her previous executive search experience was at Neumann Executive Search Partners (formerly Brill Neumann Associates), where she was a Vice President focused on both academic and administrative leadership searches. She has partnered with institutions on searches for presidents, provosts, deans, vice presidents and a variety of other senior leadership positions, always with an eye to the alignment of the candidate with institutional needs and priorities.
Dr. Trotta's recent searches include:
Dr. Trotta’s other clients have included Allegheny College, Edmonds Community College, Emory University, Georgetown University, Northeastern University, Rice University, Rider University, Stony Brook University, the University of Dayton, the University of New Hampshire, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and Wayne State University.
Dr. Trotta has presented as a speaker and panelist at a variety of meetings and conferences of education-related professional organizations, including the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO), the American Council on Education’s Women’s Leadership Forum, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Higher Education Leadership Conference.
Dr. Trotta holds a B.A. in communications (Phi Beta Kappa) and an M.A. in higher education administration, both from Boston College. She earned a doctorate in higher education management from the University of Pennsylvania, where her dissertation research focused on building the administrative leadership pipeline on college and university campuses. She is the Immediate Past Chair of the Alumni Advisory Board of the Executive Doctorate Program at the University of Pennsylvania and was previously on the executive committee of the Education Alumni Association at Penn’s Graduate School of Education.
