NYU New York Leadership

NYU Abu Dhabi's core leadership team includes members from NYU New York.

Linda Mills serves as a key liaison between NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU, in New York City. In addition to her responsibilities with NYU Abu Dhabi, Linda serves as Vice Chancellor and Senior Vice Provost for Global Programs and University Life, and as professor of Social Work, Public Policy, and Law. She is also executive director of the NYU Center on Violence and Recovery, the Production Lab, and the Of Many Institute.

Linda's research interests include domestic violence prevention and restorative justice practice with funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Justice. In addition to these scholarly activities, she is a filmmaker, working across all film genres. Her 2015 short, Of Many, debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival (and went on to screen at 15 festivals). An extended version of the film also aired nationally in the Unites States on ABC.

Linda received her BA from the University of California, Irvine; JD from the University of California, Hastings College of Law; an MSW from San Francisco State University; and a PhD in Health Policy from Brandeis University.

MJ Knoll-Finn is the Senior Vice President for Enrollment Management, leading student recruitment, admissions, and financial aid for NYU Abu Dhabi and across NYU’s global network. 

MJ drives evidence-based enrollment strategies that focus on attracting and shaping classes of diverse and academically talented students who will thrive at NYU Abu Dhabi and beyond.

For the New York campus, MJ also oversees the Registrar, Enrollment Technology, Enrollment Marketing and Communication, Graduate Marketing and Admissions Consulting, Institutional Research, Data Governance, Institutional Strategy, Positioning and Benchmarking, Opportunity Programs, and Student Success.

Prior to joining NYU, she served as Vice President of Enrollment for Emerson College and Dean of Admissions at Northeastern University School of Law. She is an active member of The College Board, currently serving on their board of trustees as well as several key committees. MJ earned her BA from the University of New Hampshire and MBA from Northeastern University.

As Academic Director at 19 Washington Square North, NYU Abu Dhabi’s home in New York, Ann Morning serves as a liaison between NYU faculty in New York and Abu Dhabi. Her responsibilities include directing the 19 WSN Faculty Fellows Program, which is designed to encourage NYU faculty in New York to further engage with NYUAD and vice-versa; supporting collaborative research that connects schools and departments in New York to NYUAD’s programs, divisions, and centers; and fostering a vibrant scholarly presence at 19 Washington Square North.  

A member of NYU’s Department of Sociology since 2004 and a Faculty Affiliate at NYUAD since 2012, Morning also holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis. Her research focuses on how racial difference is conceptualized and categorized. Much of her work — such as The Nature of Race: How Scientists Think and Teach about Human Difference (University of California Press, 2011) — investigates how contemporary genetics influences discourse about race, while her current book project explores how Italians make sense of their country’s growing demographic diversity and draw boundaries against newcomers.

Morning previously worked as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and as a diplomat in the US Foreign Service. From 1995 to 1997, she was an Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She received her BA magna cum laude from Yale, her Master’s in International Affairs from Columbia, and her PhD in sociology from Princeton. She also studied at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris.

Additional Members of the NYU Abu Dhabi Core

• Andrew Hamilton, NYU President
• Martin Dorph, Executive Vice President
  
• Katherine E. Fleming, NYU Provost
• Ellen Schall, Senior Presidential Fellow