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Carolyn Dinshaw is a senior program officer for Higher Learning. Ms. Dinshaw brings to the Foundation a career-long dedication to interdisciplinary study as well as familiarity with a broad range of US higher education institutions. She has created new structures for creative scholarly and pedagogical work in addition to having served in a variety of administrative roles.

Ms. Dinshaw received her AB from Bryn Mawr College, followed by her Ph.D. from Princeton University in English literature. From 1982 to 1999 she was a faculty member at the University of California at Berkeley, where she was instrumental in the early development of LGBTQ studies. Moving to New York University, she was the founding director of the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality from 1999 to 2005. Concurrently she directed the gender and sexuality studies program, developing a new, intersectional curriculum. She also helped to found the interdisciplinary department of social and cultural analysis, chairing it from 2006 to 2007 and 2012–2015. Named the Julius Silver Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and English at NYU in 2015, she served as dean for the humanities from 2018 to 2021. In her twenty-three years at the institution, Ms. Dinshaw regularly taught materials past and present, on topics ranging from medieval misogyny to queer New York City. In addition, she taught through NYU's prison education program at Wallkill Correctional Facility.