Nancy Hoffman currently directs the Early College High School Initiative at Jobs for the Future, funded primarily by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She also leads JFF’s work on dual enrollment policies and practices, as well as JFF’s contributions to Making Opportunity Affordable, an initiative of Lumina Foundation for Education focused on lowering the cost of college for students and institutions alike.
Dr. Hoffman’s career spans many years of work in high schools and higher education. She was a Senior Lecturer in Education at Brown University and served as director of the President’s Office and secretary of the Brown Corporation. Dr. Hoffman served as Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies at Temple University, Presidential Fellow, and director of the University Honors Program, with faculty appointments in English and women’s studies. She was the academic services dean at Harvard Graduate School of Education from 1988-1990. She also served as a program officer at the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education and a founder and faculty member of the College of Public and Community Service at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. At the University of Massachusetts, she ran the Center for the Improvement of Teaching. Prior to her University of Massachusetts affiliation, she held teaching positions in English and comparative literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Portland State University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For many summers, she co-convened the Academic Environment Unit of HERS Summer Institute for Women in Higher Education Administration.
Dr. Hoffman holds a B.A. and Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley. She chaired the board of directors of the Feminist Press, the oldest women’s press in the United States, from 2002 to 2006. She serves on the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education. In addition to her publications for JFF, Hoffman is the author most recently of Women's True Profession: Voices from the History of Teaching (Harvard Education Publishing Group).
