Northwestern University CEO and leadership

Over the past 35 years, David Eckert has served as Chief Executive Officer of international companies in a wide range of industries (including the Hibu Group, a business providing print advertising, websites, and other internet services to small and medium enterprise customers).

He was Vice President and Partner at Bain & Company, and has been a member or chair of numerous public and private boards of directors, including the Hibu Group, X-Rite, Inc. (NASDAQ: XRIT), Clean Harbors, Inc. (NYSE: CLH) and Italiaonline S.p.A.

He is an economics and engineering graduate of Northwestern University and earned an MBA from the Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar and a Loeb Rhoades Fellow.

Robin Means Coleman comes to Northwestern from Texas A&M University, where she serves as vice president and associate provost for diversity and a professor in the Department of Communication. There, she leads the university’s efforts in accountability, climate and equity, working collaboratively with faculty, staff and students across Texas A&M’s 16 colleges and schools and two branch campuses.

Coleman is also a nationally prominent and award-winning scholar of communication and African American studies, with a focus on media studies and the cultural politics of Blackness. She is the author of several books, including “Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present,” and “African-American Viewers and the Black Situation Comedy: Situating Racial Humor.”

She holds a tenured appointment as the inaugural Ida B. Wells and Ferdinand Barnett Professor in the Department of Communication Studies in the School of Communication, and courtesy appointments in the Department of Radio/TV/Film in the School of Communication, and in the Department of African American Studies in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

Before her appointment at Texas A&M, Coleman was on faculty at University of Michigan and served as associate dean of social sciences in the Rackham Graduate School, as well as chair of the Department of Communication Studies. She previously was on faculty at University of Pittsburgh and New York University.

Coleman received her bachelor’s degree in communications from Chatham College, her master’s degree in communications from University of Missouri and her Ph.D. in mass communications from Bowling Green State University. She later earned a certificate in diversity and inclusion from Cornell University.