Dan Porterfield

Since becoming president on March 1, 2011, Porterfield has led F&M in the development of Claiming Our Future, a visionary strategic plan for the College, launched an innovative approach to students’ personal and professional success through a new Office of Student and Post-Graduate Development, and formulated a distinctive student talent strategy building upon a significant expansion of F&M’s financial aid program. Porterfield serves as a trustee of the College Board and on the board of the Lenfest Foundation, and chairs the board of the Lenfest College Scholarship Foundation, which provides application assistance and financial aid to talented students from across rural Pennsylvania. He also advises Teach For America, the College Advising Corps, and the Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America (LEDA), and is a member of the Association of American Colleges and Universities’ Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) Presidents’ Trust, an advocacy group for the liberal arts. Prior to his appointment at Franklin & Marshall, Porterfield served as Senior Vice President for Strategic Development for his alma mater, Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C. In this role, he led Georgetown's institutional positioning, communications, government relations, community relations, and intercollegiate athletics, and spearheaded the University’s relationship with the D.C. public schools. He founded a number of longstanding Georgetown programs for immigrant children, D.C. students, and at-risk youth. Before coming to Georgetown in 1997, Porterfield served for four years as a senior aide to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Donna E. Shalala. Porterfield was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and a Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities. He earned his Ph.D. at The City University of New York Graduate Center. A native of Baltimore, Porterfield is married to Karen A. Herrling, an attorney who leads efforts on behalf of vulnerable populations for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. They have three children.