Tania Tetlow (NC ’92)

Tania Tetlow, Newcomb College graduate and former Senior Vice President and Chief of Staff at Tulane, has made history as the first woman and first layperson to serve as president of not only one, but two religious universities: Loyola University New Orleans and Fordham University.

Tetlow completed her Bachelor of Arts in American studies at Newcomb in 1992 and went on to earned a Juris Doctor degree with honors from Harvard Law School, where she was a Harry S. Truman Fellow. After working as a federal prosecutor, she joined faculty at Tulane Law School in 2005. Tetlow became Tulane’s Associate Provost for International Affairs in 2015, and was appointed Senior Vice President and Chief of Staff later that same year.

In 2018, Tetlow became the 17th President of Loyola University New Orleans. She was the first woman and the first layperson to lead Loyola since the Society of Jesus founded the university in 1912. Tetlow was also the fourth, as well as the youngest, woman to lead one of the 27 colleges and universities in the U.S. that make up the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities.

In 2022, Tetlow made history for the second time, becoming the 33rd President of Fordham University in New York. Her appointment marked the first time in the Jesuit university’s 181-year-old history that it is not led by a priest.