Jamie P. Merisotis
Jamie P. Merisotis, President and CEO of Lumina Foundation
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Jamie P. Merisotis has served as president and CEO of Lumina Foundation for Education since January 1, 2008.
Long a champion of the idea that higher education enhances both society and individuals, Merisotis has worked for decades to increase educational opportunity among low-income, minority and other historically underrepresented populations.
At Lumina, Merisotis is continuing that effort by employing a strategic, outcomes-based approach in pursuing the Foundation's mission of expanding college access and success. Under his leadership, Lumina has embraced an ambitious and specific goal: to ensure that, by 2025, 60 percent of Americans have high quality two-year or four-year degrees—up from the current level of 39 percent. It is Merisotis' aim that all of Lumina's efforts and activities—grant making, communication, evaluation, policy advocacy and convening—work toward achieving that goal.
Merisotis is an expert on a wide range of higher-education issues. He is well versed in domestic and international issues related to higher-education opportunity and access, including student financial aid, minority-serving colleges and universities, global higher-education policy strategies, and social and economic benefits of higher education. He is recognized as an authority on college and university financing and has published major studies and reports on topics ranging from higher-education rankings to technology-based learning.
Before joining Lumina Foundation, Merisotis was founding president of the Institute for Higher Education Policy. Founded in Washington, D.C., in 1993, IHEP is an independent, non-partisan organization regarded as one of the world's premier higher-education research and policy centers. While at IHEP, Merisotis helped establish the Alliance for Equity in Higher Education, an unprecedented coalition of national associations whose members represent more than 350 minority-serving institutions, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and Hispanic-Serving Institutions.
Merisotis also managed IHEP's global efforts to leverage the social and economic effects of higher education, especially in southern Africa, the former Soviet Union and other developing areas. In 2006, he helped establish the Global Center on Private Financing of Higher Education, an IHEP initiative to address the growing role of private financing in expanding access to postsecondary education around the world. Additionally, Merisotis oversaw the Institute's work on college and university ranking systems, policy leadership development and other areas with cross-national implications.
Prior to founding IHEP, Merisotis had served as executive director of the National Commission on Responsibilities for Financing Postsecondary Education, a bipartisan commission appointed by the U.S. president and congressional leaders. He authored the commission's final report, Making College Affordable Again, and many of the commission's recommendations became national policy during the 1990s. Merisotis also helped create the Corporation for National and Community Service (AmeriCorps), serving as an advisor to senior management on issues related to the quality and effectiveness of national-service initiatives.
Merisotis' work has been published extensively in the higher-education field. He has written and edited several books and monographs, and he is a frequent contributor to magazines, journals and newspapers. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, the Times Higher Education Supplement (London), The Chronicle of Higher Education, Higher Education in Europe, The Review of Higher Education and other periodicals.
Merisotis is a member of the executive committee of the London-based European Access Network. He also is a member of the board of trustees of Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and previously served as president of the college's alumni association. Merisotis' previous board service included chairman of the board for Scholarship America, the nation's largest private-sector scholarship and educational-support organization; vice chairman of the board of directors for the Washington Internship Institute; and member of the board of directors of the National College Access Network.
Merisotis has received numerous awards and honors, including the 2002 Robert P. Huff Golden Quill Award from the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, and the 2001 Community College Government Relations Award presented by the American Association of Community Colleges and the Association of Community College Trustees. He was a 2005 finalist for the Brock International Prize in Education, and in 1998 he was named by Change magazine as one of the top young leaders (under the age of 45) in American higher education.
