Dr. B-Sweeney

Today we are celebrating our Sister of the Year, Dr. Joanne Berger-Sweeney a mother, daughter, sister, friend an accomplished neuroscientist and experienced leader in higher education, and the Twenty-Second President of Trinity College.

She’s the first African American and the first woman to serve as president of the college since it was founded in 1823, Berger-Sweeney is a champion of a liberal arts education, improving campus equity and diversity, fostering community and global engagement, caring for the school’s proud alumni, and preparing students to lead bold and transformative lives. 

She has served on many boards in the Hartford region and beyond, including Hartford HealthCare, where she was recently named Chairwoman, the Connecticut Conference of Independent Colleges, for which she is the past chair; and the Hartford Consortium for Higher Education; and she was appointed to the board of the Capital Region Development Authority by Governor Malloy. She also serves on the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division III Presidents Council and the Luce Foundation, as well as a member of the Neuroscience Selection Advisory Board for the prestigious Gruber Prize. 

Berger-Sweeney is the recipient of numerous awards. She has been honored with a Lifetime Mentoring Award from the Society for Neuroscience (2006) and a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award. In 2022, she was honored by Tufts University for her legacy of transformational Black leadership and was the recipient of the Edward Bouchet Academic Leadership Award from the Institute for Cross-Cultural Awareness and Transformative Education. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the International Behavioral Neuroscience Society (IBNS). 

Before coming to Trinity, Berger-Sweeney served as dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University (2010–14), creating the vision and setting the strategic direction for the university’s largest school. She began her academic career as a member of the Wellesley College faculty, joining in 1991 as an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and rising through the ranks to become the Allene Lummis Russell Professor in Neuroscience. Her teaching and research career at Wellesley spanned 19 years, including serving as director of Wellesley’s Neuroscience Program and an associate dean.

Berger-Sweeney received an undergraduate degree in psychobiology from Wellesley College, an M.P.H. in environmental health sciences from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in neurotoxicology from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, where she did the proof of concept work on Razadyne, one of the most widely used Alzheimer’s drugs in the world. She completed postdoctoral training at the National Institute of Health (INSERM) in Paris, France. 
 
Berger-Sweeney has authored more than 60 scientific publications, holds several scientific patents, and has held grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and numerous private foundations.

Listen to her podcast:
https://www.underthesisterhoodpodcast.com/1999410/13415658