Koya | Diversified Search Group partnered with the Center for Social Concerns at Notre Dame on its Executive Director search. Our work resulted in the appointment of Suzanne Shanahan, an award-winning educator, in this role.

The Center for Social Concerns transforms hearts and minds by enacting Catholic Social Tradition through community-engaged research, teaching, and learning for the sake of justice and the common good.

Shanahan most recently served as the Nannerl O. Keohane Director of the Kenan Institute for Ethics, one of the country’s leading ethics centers. Shanahan led the effort to help students and faculty understand the moral challenges of our time and create scholarly frameworks, policies, and practices to address them. During her time as director, the institute experienced significant increases in research grants, programming grants, philanthropy, and robust alumni participation in learning opportunities, advisory board participation, and annual giving.

Shanahan’s additional leadership roles at Duke include managing the research service-learning initiative DukeEngage, one of the largest fully-funded civic engagement programs in the United States, and directing the Kenan Refugee Project, a six-country, community-based project on forced migration. She also serves as chair of Duke’s Ethics Education Council, a position she has held since 2016.

Shanahan has participated in, and led, the creative development of a range of innovative, student-centered, high-impact interventions, both inside and outside the curriculum at Duke.

She received her bachelor’s degree in international studies from Johns Hopkins University and her master’s and doctoral degrees in sociology from Stanford University.

We invite you to read the announcement: Suzanne Shanahan appointed executive director of Center for Social Concerns at Notre Dame.