Education
- Ph.D. in Management, University of Connecticut
- M.B.A. in Technology Management, University of New Haven
- B.S. in Chemistry, University of Connecticut
Biography
Rowena Ortiz-Walters, Ph.D., serves as Dean of the Greehey School of Business and Professor of Management. Prior to joining the GSB, Ortiz-Walters served as Dean of the School of Business and Economics at SUNY Plattsburgh in New York for six years. As dean, she was responsible for building and sustaining a culture that supports faculty and student success; strategic planning and creation of a shared vision for the school; maintenance of AACSB accreditation and high educational standards; innovative thinking and programming that meets market demands and student needs; and fostering partnerships with the external business community.
Ortiz-Walters is a scholar and public speaker in higher education. Through her scholarship and speaking engagements, she has contributed to the national conversation on the status of women’s and BIPOC careers. Speaking engagements include: Catalyst®, Permanent Commission on the Status of Women, Institute on Teaching and Mentoring, AACSB – PhD Project Aspiring Leader seminar, Purdue University, Chambers of Commerce, among others.
She has published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Vocational Behavior and Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship. Ortiz-Walters continuous to conduct research and has a good track record of publications. Her publication, which examined satisfaction with mentoring relationships, was a Highly Commended Paper Award Winner. Her research expertise includes examining informal and formal mentoring relationships as a career developmental tool for women and racial minorities, issues of diversity in the workplace, and the entrepreneurial ventures of women and racial minorities with a particular emphasis on Latinos.
Ortiz-Walters has worked with the Institute on Teaching and Mentoring to help them better understand what can be learned from business about recruiting a diverse workforce. She has given talks on the importance of mentoring for effective leadership, and planned and delivered several professional development workshops over the years including one on the ethics of mentoring.
Ortiz-Walters also has a profound commitment to the development of women and underrepresented minorities. Her personal mission has been to economically empower women and individuals of diverse backgrounds. She has conducted training for women business owners for the Permanent Commission on Women’s Status and has done work with Chambers of Commerce to better understand minority-owned ventures. She worked with ACCION on a national study of small business owner financial borrowing behaviors and preferences, which included a two-phase, longitudinal project collecting both quantitative and qualitative data on over 800 minority-owned firms.
Ortiz-Walters was selected to Diversity MBA’s annual list of Top 100 under 50 Executive Leaders for 2021. She was named one of the 50 Most Influential Latinos in Connecticut by the Latinos United for Professional Advancement (LUPA) Organization. She was also honored by the White House Initiative on Hispanic Excellence in Education.
She sat on the Vision2Action board, Harvard University Medical School’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion board, and Executive Committee of the Gender and Diversity in Organizations (GDO) Division for the Academy of Management. Ortiz-Walters was a Board Member on the Champlain Valley Physician’s Hospital Foundation and served as Chair of the Women Administrators in Management Education (WAME) Steering Committee for AACSB.
Formerly, she was Department Chair and Professor of Management at Quinnipiac University where she co-founded and served as co-director of the Center for Women and Business. Ortiz-Walters earned her PhD in Management and a BS in Chemistry from the University of Connecticut, and an MBA in Technology Management from the University of New Haven. Prior to joining academia, she worked as a polymer and organic chemist for Uniroyal Chemical Co.