Kelly Sims Gallagher Named Dean of The Fletcher School

August 28, 2024

Dear members of the Tufts community,

We are pleased to announce that after an extensive international search, Kelly Sims Gallagher has been named dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, effective immediately. Kelly’s appointment marks the beginning of a new chapter for Fletcher and we look forward to further strengthening Fletcher’s standing as a premier institution for global affairs education.

Her appointment builds on a distinguished career as a professor, mentor, researcher, and policymaker. A Fletcher alum, Kelly started her academic career at the Harvard Kennedy School and returned to The Fletcher School in 2009 to join the Fletcher faculty. As Professor of Energy and Environmental Policy, and later as Academic Dean from 2020 to 2023, she has consistently demonstrated her dedication to the continued success of Fletcher. Her leadership as Dean ad interim since July 2023 has further shown her ability to guide Fletcher into a position of strength and excellence, and we look forward to her new term as dean.

Kelly is well recognized as a global leader and an expert on U.S.-China relations, energy technology innovation, green industrialization, and climate policy. She served as a senior policy advisor in the Office of Science and Technology Policy in The White House and the U.S. State Department during the Obama administration and currently serves on the boards of the Belfer Center at Harvard University and the Energy Foundation China. She is a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She has published three books with The MIT Press, dozens of articles in leading scholarly journals in her field, and is frequently quoted as an expert in the media.

To learn more about Kelly and her vision for Fletcher, we encourage you to read the Q&A on Tufts Now.

We extend our gratitude to the search committee for their dedicated efforts throughout the search process. Please join us in congratulating Kelly and welcoming her as the new dean of the Fletcher School.

Sincerely,
Sunil Kumar
President

Caroline Attardo Genco
Provost and Senior Vice President