Taking leadership to the next level

Jill Andrews

Chief Creative Officer and Interim VP and CMO

Enterprise Marketing Hub

Jill Andrews, chief creative officer and interim VP and CMO, joined the ASU Enterprise Marketing Hub in June 2015. She nurtures and directs a creative and marketing community that brings the ASU brand to life. In her role, she is responsible for articulating university brand standards, driving the creative featured in university advertising and marketing campaigns, and leading creative production management for the Hub and the ASU Print and Imaging Lab. As interim VP and CMO, Jill leads the Enterprise Marketing Hub—overseeing department operations and oversight of ASU’s comprehensive marketing strategy.

She and her teams have earned regional and national recognition, including Emmys, CASE Circle of Excellence awards and multiple President's Award for Innovation honors that reflect significant contributions to ASU and higher education through the creation, development and implementation of innovative projects, programs, initiatives, services and techniques.

Andrews joined ASU in 1999 and brings a unique depth of knowledge and experience to the Hub executive team, working in a range of leadership roles across the university during a time of unprecedented growth, advancement and recognition. She has directed marketing efforts focused on branding, recruiting, student affairs, faculty and academic affairs, alumni and extended education at ASU.

Before joining ASU, she held marketing and communications positions for nonprofit organizations and national media relations and public relations firms.

An ASU alumna, Andrews holds a Master of Public Administration and a bachelor's degree in communication from the university. She lives in the Phoenix-Scottsdale Arcadia neighborhood with her husband Brian, an ASU alumnus, and two children, Kyle and Chloe.

Cassandra Aska

Deputy Vice President and Dean of Students Tempe

Educational Outreach and Student Services

Cassandra Aska is the Deputy Vice President and Dean of Students at Arizona State University, Tempe campus. She provides leadership and strategic direction to support the success of all students. Through collaborative efforts, Dean Aska fosters a comprehensive student life experience, advancing student involvement, responsibility, service, inclusion, and community. She works directly with student leaders in co-creating the overall student life experience.  She provides leadership and direction in key functional areas while fostering relationships with stakeholders within the larger university and greater community. 

Prior to becoming Dean of Students on the Tempe campus, she had the privilege of being on the inaugural student affairs team that planned for and executed the student life experience for the new ASU Downtown Phoenix campus in 2006.  Her responsibilities included housing, student activities, and community engagement. 

Dr. Aska currently serves as the University Chair for the Community of Campus Inclusion which works to promote diversity and inclusion at ASU.  She was appointed in 2020 to the Advisory Council on African American Affairs focused on the success of Black faculty and staff, and the growth of students at ASU, while also convening and engaging the Black community at ASU, locally and nationally on a variety of issues.

Dr. Aska has been a member of the Sun Devil family since 2001.  She has served in a variety of leadership roles on the West, Downtown Phoenix, and Tempe campuses.  A first-generation college student, Cassandra earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology from St. John Fisher College, a Master of Education in Counseling and Student Personnel Services from University of Maryland College Park, and her Doctor of Education in Leadership and Innovation from Arizona State University.  Dr. Aska is passionate about supporting the people around her, mentoring and coaching them to connect to their passion and meet their goals.

Olga Davis

Associate Dean and Professor

Barrett, The Honors College, Downtown Phoenix Campus; Hugh Downs School of Human Communication

Dr. Olga Idriss Davis empowers audiences to re-imagine their possibilities, productivity, and purpose to embrace their greatest potential. The Los Angeles native holds the positions of Associate Dean of Barrett, The Honors College and Full Professor of Human Communication at Arizona State University (ASU). Davis is the recipient of the 2019 Gary Krahenbuhl Difference Maker Award from The College, of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University, recognizing her work in the community and for making a difference in the lives of students and community members alike. She is co-founder of Justice and Equity Honors Network (JEHN), an honors certificate program designed to examine issues of injustice, incivility, and political disengagement that trouble our world, in collaboration with Barrett, The Honors College and Macaulay Honors College, New York. Davis’ research area is in the domain of critical cultural studies and health communication. Her work explores the socio-cultural determinants of health and the impact of identity on the health of marginalized communities. She has numerous essays published in interdisciplinary academic journals and is co-editor of Centering Ourselves: African American Feminist and Womanist Studies of Discourse published by Hampton Press. As an alumna of The Juilliard School, Davis debuted in the role of Student Nurse on the daytime television series, General Hospital, and is heard nationally on voice-overs for television and radio. She weaves oral history, performance, and storytelling to explore cultural issues of race, social determinants of health, and disparities. Central to her work in health communication is the study of narrative—how narrative empowers, creates, and fosters cultural awareness to provide a space for social change. Davis’ work in cardiovascular health disparities among African American men in Black Barbershops led to barbershop blood pressure screenings and increased health literacy. Davis’ performance project entitled, The Journey: Living Cancer Out Loud, is a narrative intervention written and inspired by evidence-based interviews of the lived experience of African American women and men survivors and caregivers living with breast cancer.

David Gillum

Assistant Vice President and Chief Safety Officer

Environmental Health and Safety

David Gillum is the Assistant Vice President and Chief Safety Officer of Environmental Health and Safety and Employee Health at Arizona State University. As the Chief Safety Officer for ASU, Mr. Gillum has safety and compliance oversight responsibilities for over 2,500 laboratories, shops, studios and makerspaces that use biological agents, chemicals, radiological materials, lasers, x-rays and other hazardous materials. Mr. Gillum is the ASU Responsible Official for the Federal Select Agent and Toxin Program.

Mr. Gillum was the 2020 President of ABSA International. In 2019, Mr. Gillum was presented with a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Directors Community Leadership Award by Director Christopher Wray in Washington D.C. 

Mr. Gillum co-founded the Arizona Biosafety Alliance (AZBA), an ABSA-affiliate, and served as President, Past-President, and Treasurer of the organization. In 2015, Mr. Gillum established a partnership with ASU in Mexico and AMEXBIO to support biosafety collaborations within Mexico and other Central and South American countries.

Mr. Gillum's service includes contributions as Associate Editor of Applied Biosafety and a past judge at the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Competition. Mr. Gillum's academic interests include biosafety, biosecurity and the future of synthetic biology, gene editing, and gene drives, and how members of the public can have an active voice in the future of these technologies. Mr. Gillum has presented at dozens of conferences regarding the impact of emerging biotechnologies on safety and security. Mr. Gillum has published scientific articles in Science, Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, Issues in Science and Technology, The Conversation and Applied Biosafety.

Mr. Gillum holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and a master’s degree in Environmental Health Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Mr. Gillum has over twenty-five years of experience in creating an effective and robust safety culture at institutions of higher learning and broad expertise leading successful operations through open communication, collaboration, and innovation.

Dr. Carla Harcleroad

Executive Director of ASU@Lake Havasu

Professor of Practice, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College

Dr. Carla Harcleroad has held leadership, research, and teaching roles at multiple institutions and organizations in the past two decades. She has worked as a Lead Researcher at the Educational Policy Improvement Center, which focuses on understanding, and increasing, college and career readiness for high school students, and she built and directed PathwayOregon at the University of Oregon (UO), which is a nationally recognized retention and degree completion program for lower-income Oregonians. Following her work at the UO, Dr. Harcleroad served as the Assistant Dean for Student Success and Managing Director of the College Advising Center she developed at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon.

Directly prior to joining Arizona State University, Dr. Harcleroad served as the Associate Vice President for Advising & Career Services at Portland State University (PSU). In this role, she worked with Deans, Associate Deans, Vice Provosts, and department chairs to implement PSU's Academic & Career Advising Redesign. Dr. Harcleroad’s last project at PSU was to lead efforts to support building renovations and the establishment of the Undergraduate Advising Resource Center, the University Career Center, and the Transfer & Returning Student Resource Center in new physical space.

While serving in these various roles, Dr. Harcleroad has maintained her commitment to serving as a practitioner-teacher and practitioner-scholar, and she has taught graduate and undergraduate students, supported professional development opportunities for employees, presented at conferences, coordinated participation in national surveys, developed and implemented programmatic assessment and research instruments, and served on Association of Public and Land-grant Universities committees committed to using data to inform practice and improve service delivery and the student experience.

Dr. Harcleroad received her Ph.D. in Educational Policy, Management, and Organization from the University of Oregon, an M.A. in Higher Education and Organizational Change from UCLA, an M.S. in Educational Leadership, Higher Education Administration from the University of Oregon, and a B.A. in English and Applied Linguistics from Portland State University. In her free time, you will find her with family and friends, caring for her rescued Bullmastiff, "Joey," reading, and spending as much time as possible enjoying sun-filled activities.

Dr. G.L.A. Harris

Senior Associate Dean of Strategic Initiatives and Professor

Thunderbird School of Global Management

Dr. G.L.A. Harris, an accomplished scholar and consummate pracademic, came to the Thunderbird School of Global Management following a successful 17-year career at Portland State University (PSU). She is renowned for her research on the U.S. military and forces within the international community and twice served as a Fulbright distinguished Chair; first as Research Chair in North American Integration to Carleton University in Canada and more recently as NATO Chair in Security Studies. It was Harris’ seminal research on student veterans that not only resulted in both state (Oregon) and federal (G.I. Bill) legislations and the establishment of the first Veterans Resource Center (VRC) in the U.S. but her work became the impetus and prototype for today’s movement for VRCs and like entities on university and college campuses around the country.

Harris has won a number of awards for her research, among them the first of its kind book Living Legends and Full Agency: Implications of Repealing the Combat Exclusion Policy (2015) for Outstanding Book of the Year in Public Sector Human Resource Management from the American Society for Public Administration (2017), Researcher of the Year from the College of Urban and Public Affairs (2019-2020) and Provost Leadership Fellow (2019-2020), the latter two from PSU. Her research has been widely published in some of public administration and public policy premier journals, serves on multiple journal editorial boards and has held several leadership roles in professional organizations for the disciplines. Her research and leadership in academia has also led to appointments by two Oregon Governors to statewide task forces and was most recently appointed to now national accreditor, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities’ (NWCCU) Data Council owing to her work on institutional accreditation. A former Senior Commissioned Officer, Harris is a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Air Force’s junior, intermediate and senior service schools, including Air War College.

Heather Landes

Director of ASU School of Music, Dance and Theatre

Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts

Heather Landes is director of the Arizona State University School of Music, Dance and Theatre. Having served in leadership roles in the arts for more than two decades, Landes has collaboratively developed key curricular and community initiatives and has wide-ranging experience in academic leadership.

Landes served the ASU School of Music as director from 2012-2020 and under her leadership, the school attracted diverse internationally renowned faculty, developed key curricular initiatives (e.g., the new BA in Popular Music, the PhD in Musicology, the MM in Conducting, and the minor in music theatre), and established an emphasis on community engagement and a school-wide commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion. Prior to this, she served the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts as associate dean from 2008–2014 and oversaw curriculum development, recruitment and admission, enrollment and retention initiatives, career planning, and managed the Herberger Institute online learning, communications and student success teams. Previous academic leadership appointments include serving as assistant dean and director of student success for the Herberger Institute, and assistant dean of enrollment for the Northwestern University School of Music and managing director of the National High School Music Institute.

Landes’ research focuses on creativity, entrepreneurship and organizational culture in higher education arts programs. As an advocate for the importance of the arts, she has presented sessions on arts entrepreneurship and curricular reform at the National Association of Schools of Music annual meeting, and Counseling the High School Performing or Visual Artist at the National Association for College Admission Counseling conferences, regional admission counseling meetings, the Interlochen Arts Academy and high schools in the United States and abroad. A former student of Walfrid Kujala and Alexander Murray, Landes holds a bachelor's in flute performance from the University of Illinois and a master's in flute performance from Northwestern University. She earned a doctorate in education from Loyola University Chicago. Her dissertation research involved a comparative study of the student experience at a conservatory of music and a university school of music.

Scott Mahler

Director of FSE Learning and Teaching Hub

Global Outreach and Extended Education

Scott Mahler, Director of the newly formed Fultons Schools of Engineering Learning and Teaching Hub, works closely with administration, faculty, learning experience designers, media developers and learning technologists to improve student retention, outcomes, access and inclusivity across all FSE programs by facilitating a culture of teaching and learning in the Fulton Schools of Engineering through professional learning, instructional consultation, the effective use of learning analytics and delivering outstanding learning experiences at the intersection of art, science and technology.

Prior to joining the ASU family in December of 2016, Scott provided operational and strategic leadership for the Digital Education & Innovation Lab in the Office of Academic Innovation (AI) at his alma mater, the University of Michigan where he led efforts to expand and solidify Michigan’s open content portfolio to reach learners around the globe. Prior to his time with Academic Innovation, he spent over fifteen years working in the Center for Professional Development in UM’s College of Engineering focused on delivering digitally enhanced courses and programs for degree seekers and professional development.

Scott has also served as a coach, teacher, local school board member and a school board president and has presented on topics related to digital learning and continuing education at regional, national and international conferences.

Jacqueline Martinez

Associate Professor and Faculty Head of Language and Cultures

College of Integrative Sciences and Arts

Jacqueline Martinez is Associate Professor of Communication and Faculty Head for the Languages and Cultures unit in the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts.  Dr. Martinez earned a BA in Communication from California State University, Northridge, and MA and PhD degrees from Southern Illinois University.  Dr. Martinez expertise is in semiotic phenomenology, which focuses on the study of communication as it mediates the relationships among personal experience, social practices, and cultural histories. This work is informed theoretically by U.S. American phenomenology and communication theory (semiotics) as they have developed in relation to European philosophy since the late 19th century. In an applied sense, the focus is on embodiment as that which enables the actualization of meaning in the immediate and concrete experiences of persons located in particular times and places. Of specific interest are issues related to racial, ethnic, class, and sexual identifications with contexts of cultural domination.  Dr. Martinez’ most recent book, New Understandings of Twin Relationships: From Harmony to Estrangement and Loneliness (2021, Routledge), co-authored with Barbara Klein and Stephen Hart, brings phenomenological insight to the experiences and challenges of being a twin in a twin relationship.  Dr. Martinez has also authored Communicative Sexualities: A Communicology of Sexual Experience (Lexington, 2011), a study of sexuality as it is lived and experienced within the complex relationship among culture, time, place and consciousness.  Her first book, Phenomenology of Chicana Experience and Identity: Communication and Transformation in Praxis (Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), received the Outstanding Book Award from the International and Intercultural Division of the National Communication Association.  This book was one of the first in the United States to integrate phenomenological work with Chicana Feminist thought.  Prior to joining ASU, Dr. Martinez was a faculty member at Purdue University and Babson College (Wellesley, MA).  Dr. Martinez was a Chicana Dissertation Fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Cristóbal Rodriguez, Ph.D. (he/him/él)

Associate Dean of Equity, Inclusion, and Community Engagement

Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College

Dr. Cristóbal Rodríguez is the Associate Dean of Equity, Inclusion and Community Engagement at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College of Arizona State University. Being born and raised in the Texas Borderlands of El Paso under hard-working immigrant parents from Mexico, and studying in Germany as a U.S. Congress-German Bundestag scholar has shaped the world views and research of Dr. Rodríguez, along with his Ph.D. studies in Education Policy and Planning with a portfolio in Mexican American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin.

In 2016 Dr. Rodríguez was recognized with the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Faculty Honors and was most recently honored as the 2019 José A. Cárdenas School Finance Fellow with the Intercultural Development Research Association to collaborate on school finance, equity, and college readiness for Black and Latina/o/x students. Dr. Rodríguez is always happy to serve, as he serves and leads on multiple national education committees, boards and organizations in advocating for educational equity for all students. Prior to his newly appointed role, Dr. Rodríguez spent 5 years as an Assistant Professor at New Mexico State University, a Hispanic Serving Institution and his undergraduate and master’s degree alma mater; with an additional 7 blessed years thereafter at Howard University in Washington, DC, a top Historically Black College/University, as an Associate Professor and as the Director of Graduate Studies of the School of Education.

Dr. Rodríguez was elected to a three-year term to the Executive Committee of UCEA in 2019 and serves on the Specialized Professional Association (SPA) Program Review Audit Committee with the National Policy Board for Educational Administration (NPBEA) as part of the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, and was recently appointed to the Board of Directors for the American Association for Hispanics in Higher Education.

Wei Shen

Professor and Chair

W.P. Carey Management and Entrepreneurship

Wei Shen is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Management and Entrepreneurship at the W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in psychology from Peking University and Ph.D. in strategic management from Texas A&M University. He has been a core faculty member in both W. P. Carey’s highly ranked full-time MBA Program and the Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) Program (in collaboration with the Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance). Prior to becoming department chair, he served as W. P. Carey’s Associate Dean for China Programs and Faculty Director of the China Executive MBA Program (in collaboration with the Shanghai National Institute of Accounting). Before joining ASU, he had been on the faculty of Rutgers University, University of Florida, and Moscow School of Management’s SKOLKOVO Institute for Emerging Market Studies. 

Taking a behavioral approach, his research focuses on strategic decision makers and their impacts on organizations. He has published many empirical studies about top executives and corporate directors in the top-tier management journals, such as the Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, and Strategic Management Journal. He has also published several theoretical articles in the Academy of Management Review that explore the dynamics of the CEO-board relationship, managerial discretion, and the impact of leader departure on subordinates’ organizational attachment. He has served on the editorial board of the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management and Governance, Management and Organization Review, and Strategic Management Journal. He is an Area Editor of the Chinese Quarterly Journal of Management, and an editor of the Empirical Methods in Organization and Management Research (3rd Edition).

He has won several awards and recognitions, including the inaugural Robert J. Litschert Best Doctoral Student Paper Award from the Business Policy and Strategy Division of the Academy of Management, and the Mays Outstanding Ph.D. Alumni Award from Mays Business School, Texas A&M University.

Tamara Underiner

Associate Dean for Professional Development and Engagement and Associate Professor of Music, Dance and Theatre

Graduate College

Tamara Underiner is Associate Dean for Professional Development and Engagement in Arizona State University's Graduate College, and associate professor in the School of Music, Dance and Theatre, where she serves as founding director of the Ph.D. program in Theatre and Performance of the Americas.  She also convenes Creative Health Collaborations, a university-wide effort to integrate arts, humanities and design approaches in health research, education, practice and policy. With Dr. David Coon, she co-directs a new NEA-sponsored Caregiving Research Lab studying the health-supporting role of the arts in different types of caregiving contexts and via a range of participatory arts experiences involving both caregivers and their loved ones.

As associate dean, she oversees the general professional development activities of the Graduate College for graduate students and postdocs, including the Preparing Future Faculty and Scholars program; develops new curricular innovations as part of its Graduate College Fellows Initiatives, and supports multi-level mentoring programs.

Prior to joining the Graduate College, she was Associate Dean for Research at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, where she helped to foster interdisciplinary collaborations between Herberger artists, researchers, and other ASU faculty and community members.

As founding director of the doctoral program in Theatre and Performance of the Americas, she works closely with faculty across the Institute to develop individualized curricula, research projects, and funding opportunities for students interested in pursuing research on the relationship between artistic performance, in all its forms, and the ongoing history of the Americas and their peoples.

She earned a BA in communication arts from the University of Dayton in 1980, an MA  in theatre from ASU in 1993, and a PhD in drama from the University of Washington in 1997.  She joined the ASU faculty as an assistant professor in 2001 after a faculty appointment at the University of Minnesota School of Theatre and Dance. In 2003, she was named a Faculty Exemplar by ASU President Michael Crow.  She is a double alum of ASU’s Leadership Academy: PeerLA in 2014 and TeamLA in 2018.