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Catharine Bond Hill, B.A., B.A., M.A., ’85 Ph.D.

Trustee

Catharine Bond Hill is managing director of Ithaka S&R, Ithaka Harbors. In her role, she leads the company’s research and consulting initiatives to improve access to higher education and enhance student outcomes.

Catharine Bond Hill

From 2006 to 2016 Ms. Hill served as president of Vassar College, where she expanded support for students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. Prior to her Vassar presidency, she served as provost of Williams College, where she held chief academic and financial officer responsibilities. Ms. Hill is a noted economist whose research focuses on the affordability of and access to higher education, as well as on economic development and reform in Africa. At the start of her career she worked for the World Bank and the Fiscal Analysis Division of the U.S. Congressional Budget Office. She also served as the fiscal/trade advisor, and later head, of the Harvard Institute for International Development’s Project on Macroeconomic Reform, working in Zambia’s Ministry of Finance and with the Bank of Zambia. Ms. Hill graduated summa cum laude from Williams College, and earned B.A. and M.A. degrees at Brasenose College, University of Oxford, with first-class honors in politics, philosophy, and economics. She completed her Ph.D. in economics at Yale in 1985. She has received scholarly awards, grants, and fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, Brookings Institution, National Science Foundation, and Social Science Research Council, among other organizations. In 2011 she joined the board of Yale-NUS College. She previously served on the board of the College Board and the NCAA Division III Presidents Council. Ms. Hill was elected an alumni fellow in 2013 and was named a successor trustee in 2018. She served as senior trustee from 2018 to 2021.

Resides in Bronx, New York