Vijay Pendakur

Dr. Vijay Pendakur helps people and organizations thrive. A true multi-sector organizational leader, Vijay has held Vice President and C-level roles at three companies: Zynga, VMware, and Dropbox. He has also served as the Robert W. and Elizabeth C. Staley Dean of Students at Cornell University. In his time at Cornell, he was named Presidential Advisor for Diversity and Equity, as part of a new approach to campus-wide transformation at the largest Ivy League institution. Vijay also brings strong domain expertise in student success strategy to his work, having served as Associate Vice President for Student Success at California State University – Fullerton, where he led enterprise retention and graduation efforts at one of the nation’s premier regional universities. His 2016 book, “Closing the Opportunity Gap” represents one of the few book-length works on identity-conscious student success tactics, and is still used by campus leaders today to inform strategy. Dr. Pendakur serves on the institute teaching faculty of the Race and Equity Center, at the University of Southern California, and was recognized as a top DEI leader by Channel Futures in 2021 and Untapped in 2022. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, Katie, a psychotherapist and yoga teacher, and his two young daughters, Mira and Savi.