Aarti Dhupelia

Aarti Dhupelia is vice president for undergraduate education and dean of the undergraduate college at National Louis University, where she oversees NLU’s innovative efforts to drive equity in bachelor’s degree attainment and employment for over 3,000 students annually by offering affordability, strong wraparound support, and a personalized and professionally focused curriculum. Previously, she served in several senior leadership roles at Chicago Public Schools, most recently as CPS' chief officer for the Office of College and Career Success, where she drove strategies around attendance and truancy, drop-out re-engagement, out-of-school time, social and emotional learning, college and career planning, and early college and career acceleration coursework. Before joining CPS, she worked as a management consultant to Fortune 500 companies at Marakon Associates.

She serves on the Boards of Civic Consulting Alliance, Noble Network of Charter Schools, and Distinctive Schools, as well as on the Leadership Council of Thrive Chicago, and previously she served on the Boards of iMentor Chicago and Genesys Works Chicago. In 2019, she served as co-chair of the Education Transition Committee for Chicago’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot, and in prior years, she participated in the US Department of Education’s employability skills expert working group and as a Judge in First Lady Michelle Obama’s Reach Higher Career App Challenge.

She has a master of business administration from Harvard Business School, a bachelor of arts from Northwestern University, and a certificate in academic leadership from Penn State University. She is an alumna of the Broad Residency in Urban Education and Leadership Greater Chicago and is currently pursuing her doctorate in higher education leadership at National Louis University. Aarti is a member of The Chicago Network, and in 2017, the Center for Digital Education named her to its Top 30 Technologists, Transformers, and Trailblazers nationwide.