Dr. Antoinette Farmer-Thompson is a definitively different executive leader with unique capabilities and proven outcomes resulting from seventeen (17) years in corporate America followed by twelve (12) years of progressive experience in higher education as Senior Vice President of Institutional Effectiveness, Honors College Dean, and Diversity Officer at Grand Canyon University. She is now serving as Deputy Vice President of Educational Outreach & Student Services, leading finance/budgeting, marketing, technology, career services, and at Arizona State University.
Core functional areas include organizational and cross-functional strategic planning, academic affairs, expansion and evaluation of the online learning practice/platform, process improvement, program design and evaluation, institutional-wide assessment, curriculum development, analytics and evidence-based decision making, programmatic and regional and accreditation leadership, large real estate portfolio/building projects, corporate relationship/career services management, building and expansion of academic support/tutoring serving thousands of ground and online students monthly, K-12 partnership and pathway development.
Diversity & Inclusion leadership – Launched a comprehensive organizational Diversity Council and Plan to include internal and external constituency collaboration with diverse organizations throughout the community. Launched collaborative programs to include diversity dialogues, mentoring, internships, and annual diversity reporting to include student/staff/faculty survey feedback, comparative student performance analysis, and communication/media planning critical to responding to inquiries/complaints and telling the institutional diversity story. Prior, implemented succession planning to include diversity analysis across large organizational units in the private sector.
Throughout her career, Antoinette has been lauded as a “turnaround specialist” across industries – large staffing and technology projects, K-12, and higher education through comprehensive process improvement/redesign efforts, financial recovery planning and implementation, and partial/full organizational restructures.
Community embeddedness is also part of her personal mission having served on numerous boards such as Fresh Start Women’s Foundation, Phoenix College President’s Advisory Council, the Governor’s Commission on Equity in State Contracting, and others. Also, an author and presenter, she has a deep desire and proven track record in helping advance the aspirations of the underrepresented, particularly women, both professionally and personally.
Mentorship
- Since high school and early college, Antoinette has mentored peers as student body president of Paradise Valley High School to her work in Associated Students at Arizona State University.
- Such work progressed early in her career as Human Resources Manager where she formally coached others in navigating the organization and optimizing their performance.
- As a higher education leader and former dean, she was quite successful in helping students achieve their dreams of attending top professional schools such as University of Michigan medical school, Cornell Veterinary school, and ASU law school.
- Not only did these efforts take place in the work setting, she committed to coaching in both one-on-one and groups settings in a key church role, Fresh Start Foundation for Women, and now in the Foundation for Female Equity and Inclusion (501c3) which she co-founded. Today, she works with women of color entrepreneurs, higher education colleagues, and friends on a weekly basis – sharing insights, career advice, participating on numerous dissertation committees, and providing business start-up guidance.