Rame Hanna
Dr. Rame Hanna serves as Vice President for Social Equity and Inclusion at RISD, where he provides executive leadership in advancing inclusive excellence and belonging across the institution. As a member of RISD’s senior leadership, Dr. Hanna leads university-wide strategic priorities and serves as an advisor on organizational culture and transformation. His work focuses on anticipating emerging challenges, strengthening organizational capacity, and translating RISD’s commitments into the systems and practices that shape an inclusive environment for learning, making, and creative practice.
Dr. Hanna leads the Division of Social Equity and Inclusion, including the Social Equity and Inclusion leadership team, Intercultural Student Engagement, Equity & Compliance, and Institutional Effectiveness. His portfolio spans institutional strategy, community engagement, culture change, civil rights and compliance, and institutional assessment. Across this work, he connects strategy with practice to strengthen how equity and inclusion are embedded throughout the organization and foster greater shared responsibility across the RISD community.
Central to Dr. Hanna’s leadership is the belief that belonging provides a foundation for meaningful change. Grounded in an intersectional approach, his work considers how institutional systems and everyday experiences come together to shape organizational culture. His approach emphasizes presence, trust, and shared responsibility, and he maintains close connections with students, staff, and faculty to help inform his work. Beyond RISD, Dr. Hanna is actively engaged in higher education and community partnerships at the local and national levels, working across colleges and universities, professional associations, and community organizations to strengthen connections and advance collaborative approaches to organizational and culture change.
Before joining RISD, Dr. Hanna served as the inaugural Vice Chancellor for Inclusive Culture and Belonging at the University of Colorado. His career in higher education spans leadership, teaching and learning, organizational development, and research across a range of institutional settings. These experiences continue to shape his leadership philosophy and approach to building institutions where people can contribute, learn, and thrive.
Dr. Hanna earned his PhD in Educational Leadership, Research, and Policy from the University of Colorado. His dissertation, The Politics of Equity Leadership: A Phenomenological Study of Chief Diversity Officers’ Lived Experiences and Practices in Contemporary Higher Education, reflects his broader expertise as a social scientist in organizational change and leadership. His research continues to inform how he approaches leadership, organizational culture, and the work of creating sustainable change in higher education.