Institute for Women’s Leadership Staff


Meghan Rehbein
Director
dcdean@echo.rutgers.edu
848-932-8444

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Meghan Rehbein, is the Director of the Institute for Women’s Leadership. She serves as the eleventh Dean of Douglass, a role she has held since July 2022. As Dean, she has focused on setting new strategic priorities, building curriculum around leadership development, and aligning the College with Rutgers University and the Academic Master Plan. Dr. Rehbein joined Douglass in 2018, serving most recently as Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives where she developed new opportunities for collaboration, with a special focus on communications and sustainability. Prior to that, she led the record-breaking conclusion of the highly successful Power of 100 Years Campaign on behalf of Douglass, and previously served as Vice President for Institutional Advancement at Georgian Court University. She has a bachelor’s degree from Hampshire College, a master’s degree from Sacred Heart University, and an Ed.D. from Stockton University. Dr. Rehbein has more than two decades of experience in nonprofit leadership, higher education, and health and human services organizations, and her research focuses on gender and leadership development in the nonprofit sector. Her recent publication, Embracing Ambition, is a collection of stories of women for whom challenge served as a catalyst towards a leadership identity.


Lisa Hetfield
Associate Director and Director of Development
lisahet@iwl.rutgers.edu
848-932-8447

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Lisa Hetfield is the Associate Director and Director of Development of the Institute for Women’s Leadership at Rutgers University (IWL). Hetfield has worked at Rutgers since 1990, when she joined the university as the Director of Development for Douglass, the women’s college at Rutgers. In that role, she worked to raise over $11 million for the 75th Anniversary Campaign for Douglass.

She began her work with the Institute in 1995 and since that time has directed fund-development activities, raising over $9 million for leadership programs, research, and endowments. She is a cofounder of several leadership programs at the IWL, and is co-editor of Junctures in Leadership - Business, a book of case studies published by Rutgers University Press in 2016.

Hetfield holds an Master of Arts in women’s and gender studies from Rutgers University and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Carnegie-Mellon University.

sasha-taner
Sasha Wood Taner
Program Director and Research Coordinator
sdwood@rutgers.edu
848-932-8458

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Sasha Taner is Program Director and Research Coordinator at the Rutgers’ Institute for Women’s Leadership. Sasha is a Ph.D. candidate, ABD, in Global Affairs at the Division of Global Affairs at Rutgers-Newark, where she completed her Master’s of Science in 2005. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies with a certificate in women’s leadership. Her research interests include women’s leadership studies and intergenerational mentoring, first-generation and immigrant narratives post U.S. higher education, and feminist knowledge production using oral history, interviews, and multimedia platforms to highlight women’s activism and leadership globally and locally.

Sasha has worked for over twenty years in the field of education in public and private schools both locally and abroad. Her contributions to the community have included aiding resettlement processes of asylees internationally, supporting refugee families locally, and serving for over eight years women and children survivors of domestic violence.

emily haran
Emily Haran
Director, Administration and Communication
emharan@iwl.rutgers.edu
848-932-8449

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Emily Haran is the Director of Administration and Communication for the Institute for Women’s Leadership. She supervises the social media team and coordinates all digital content for the Institute, including the website and monthly newsletter. Emily is a two-time graduate of Rutgers University, earning her Master of Arts in Communication and Information Studies and her Bachelor’s degree in Communication. She’s interested in women’s leadership, education, social media, and graphic design.

Nishi Shah photo
Nishi Shah
Program Coordinator, Alison R. Bernstein Media Mentoring Program and Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair Programs
nms249@iwl.rutgers.edu
848-932-8463

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Nishi Shah is the Program Coordinator for the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies and the Alison R. Bernstein Media Mentoring Program. She transitioned into this role from running the Global 16 Days Campaign under Rutgers’ Center for Women’s Global Leadership.

Prior to working at Rutgers, Nishi graduated with her MA in International Relations (2020) and her BA in Politics (2019), both from New York University. During her time at NYU, Nishi also double minored in Religious Studies and Dance, studied abroad, and learned both Modern Standard Arabic and Colloquial Levantine Arabic. Her research focused on women in the Middle East and in South Asia by drawing parallels between fiction and reality.

Additionally, Nishi has worked with the Syrian Emergency Task Force to bring support and awareness to women and orphans who were displaced by the Syrian revolution, as well as with YaLa Young Leaders to help youth throughout the Middle East participate in citizen journalism via social media. Nishi is a New Jersey native and a lifelong member of the Girl Scouts. In her free time, she enjoys reading, dancing, and traveling.

Contact

Institute for Women’s Leadership
162 Ryders Lane
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8555
P: 848.932.1463

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