Meet the Senior Vice President

Brian Ballentine is the senior vice president for strategy and senior advisor to the president at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Dr. Ballentine is leading a four-year pilot aimed at tackling major, cross-cutting initiatives for the university.

Prior to his appointment overseeing strategy, he served as chief of staff from 2016–2020, and was responsible for the administration and day-to-day operations of the Office of the President, overseeing the flow of information within the university’s senior administration and serving as the president’s point person for a wide array of initiatives and projects.

Dr. Ballentine is the former executive director of Rutgers’ Aresty Research Center for Undergraduates, organizing a suite of programs that support undergraduate research training and initiatives for more than 800 students and more than 200 professors each year.

Dr. Ballentine’s teaching and research has focused on the value of the humanities and theories of language. He is an Associate Professor of the Practice of the Humanities at Rutgers-New Brunswick.

Before coming to Rutgers, he was research director at CEB, now Gartner, a global consulting and advisory firm, in Washington, DC. He served in the Americorps VISTA program and earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Brown University.