Northeastern has appointed Deloris Pettis as vice president for enterprise risk management—a new position within the university. Pettis brings a strong track record of leadership in transforming enterprise-wide risk management infrastructures in both the business and higher education sectors.

Pettis has spent a significant portion of her career in the nonprofit world, including 13 years at Harvard University in various senior roles. She was instrumental in the university’s financial operation and oversaw major efforts in the areas of regulatory compliance and risk management and adherence to federal regulations. Her leadership experience at Harvard also includes overseeing the transition of a federally funded HIV/AIDS clinical care and services program in Tanzania and Nigeria at the School of Public Health.

“Deloris will be instrumental in establishing a risk management infrastructure for Northeastern that provides transparency and assessment of how risks affect the entire organization,” said Steve Kadish, senior vice president and chief operating officer. “Her expertise and leadership will better position the university to pursue its strategic goals and initiatives.”

A proven leader with decades of experience transforming and managing large-scale operations, Pettis is bringing strategic oversight to the areas of risk management and insurance, environmental health and safety, emergency preparedness and response, and business continuity at Northeastern. She will leverage and collaborate with the university’s existing resources to drive strategic and coordinated activities across the organization and develop an enterprise-wide risk reporting and monitoring system.

“I am very pleased to be here and am looking forward to working with the Northeastern University community to advance the important work of enterprise risk management,” Pettis said.

Before joining Northeastern, Pettis was a risk and audit services consultant for Barone & Associates, LLC, a financial management company, serving clients principally in higher education and nonprofit entities.

Pettis is a graduate of the State University of New York at Buffalo, and she earned her MBA from Tulane University. She is also a certified internal auditor.