Three Women Named to Endowed Chairs at Simmons University in Boston

Diane Grossman has been named to the Mockler Chair in Principled Leadership in the department of philosophy in the Gwen Ifill College of Media, Arts & Humanities. She also teaches in the women’s and gender studies department. As an academic, she specializes in continental philosophy, feminist theory and applied ethics. She is the author of Existentialism and the Philosophical Tradition (Pearson, 1990) and coauthor of Looking at Gay and Lesbian Life (Allied Books, 1988).

Dr. Grossman holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from New York University.

Jyoti Puri has been appointed to the Hazel Dick Leonard Chair in the department of sociology in the College of Social Sciences, Policy, and Practice. As a sociologist, Professor Puri works with sexuality and queer studies and postcolonial feminist theory. She is the author of Sexual States: Governance and the Struggle Over the Antisodomy Law in India (Duke University Press, 2016), which received the Distinguished Book Award from the Sociology of Sexualities Section of the American Sociological Association in 2018.

Dr. Puri is a graduate of the University of Bombay in India where she majored in sociology. She holds a master’s degree in sociology/social anthropology and a Ph.D. in sociology both from Northeastern University in Boston.

Špela Trefalt has been named to the Diana K. Trust Professorship in Leadership Development in the School of Business in the College of Organizational, Computational, and Information Sciences. Her research focuses on how professionals manage the demands of work and life outside of work, with particular emphasis on the role of interpersonal relationships in this process.

Dr. Trefalt is a graduate of the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia where she majored in law. She holds an MBA from the University of Kansas and a doctorate in business administration from Harvard Business School.