Lucie Lapovsky

Lucie Lapovsky served as president of Mercy College, a multi–campus college of 10,000 students, from 1999 to 2004. During her tenure, Mercy College doubled its graduation rate and the number of degrees awarded. In addition, she completed the first successful capital campaign, increased the college’s name recognition and opened two new campuses in Manhattan and the Bronx. As a facilitator for AGB, she specializes in areas relating to governance and leadership, strategic financial planning, and management, including cost containment, endowment, pricing and tuition discounting, and enrollment management.

Lucie has almost 30 years of experience in higher education finance in both the public and private sectors of higher education. Prior to coming to Mercy College, she served for nine years as vice president for finance at Goucher College, a liberal arts college in Baltimore, where she implemented a major merit scholarship program and worked with the board to re-do the college’s endowment and debt management strategies. Prior to Goucher, she worked as special assistant to the president of the University of Maryland at College Park, as director of finance and facilities for the Maryland Higher Education Commission (MHEC), and as a fiscal planner for the Maryland State Department of Budget and Fiscal Planning. During her time at MHEC, she worked extensively with all the colleges in the state, including the four historically black institutions.

Lucie serves on a number of boards and advisory committees including the boards of Western New England College, Packer Collegiate Institute, the Tuition Exchange, HERS, the American Public University System, an on-line regionally accredited for profit university, the National Council for Research on Women, and the White House Project. She also serves on the Committee of Visitors of Goucher College and the Common Fund’s Benchmark Advisory Committee. In addition, she is a frequent evaluator for the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools.

A recognized leader in higher education, Lucie regularly consults with the boards and senior leadership teams of colleges and universities throughout the country and internationally. Recently, she taught a doctoral seminar at NYU on governance in higher education. She is the editor of two books, including Strategic Financial Challenges for Higher Education: How to Achieve Quality, Accountability and Innovation, and the author of more than 100 chapters and articles. She has been a frequent speaker on topics ranging from women’s leadership to budgeting and resource management in higher education. Her most recent work and speaker presentations have been on cost containment in higher education, endowments and spending policies, and other higher education financial issues including enrollment management and tuition discounting.

She received her BA degree from Goucher College and her MA and PhD degrees in economics from the University of Maryland at College Park. She also attended the Institute for Educational Management at Harvard. In 1999, she was named one of the 100 top women in Maryland.