About President Wente

Dr. Susan R. Wente is Wake Forest University’s 14th president and a Distinguished University Professor of Biology and Biochemistry. 

Across her academic and administrative career, Dr. Wente has earned a reputation for thoughtful, future-oriented leadership that fosters institutional growth, academic excellence, and opportunity for all. She leads with trust, transparency, and teamwork as core values and believes the University’s motto calls Wake Forest to be a catalyst for good in society. 

Dr. Wente led an inclusive process to design a University Strategic Framework, a tool to align critical decisions about the institution’s future, focused on building a community of lifelong learning, inquiry, and strong mutual partnerships. The Framework process engaged more than 1,000 Wake Forest faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends in defining and affirming the University’s deeply held commitments and aspirations, with an energized call to embody its motto, Pro Humanitate, at home and in the world. 

Under Dr. Wente’s leadership, Wake Forest has launched new initiatives focused on access and opportunity, including the For Humanity initiative, which has raised more than $100 million to support new scholarships, and a specially designated Early Action process, a new pathway for first-generation college students to come to Wake Forest. 

The weaving together of teaching and scholarship is a core component of Wake Forest’s identity and instrumental to the transformative education the University provides. Dr. Wente works to highlight faculty academic and research excellence through her Walk with Wente video series and by investing in efforts to share faculty expertise worldwide.

Dr. Wente has also led University-wide efforts to examine the University’s complex history through how it honors and remembers enslaved men and women who are a critical part of Wake Forest’s story. She launched the University Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council in 2021 to foster collaboration and accountability and ensure Wake Forest is a community where all can learn, belong, and thrive. She also initiated the University’s first comprehensive campus climate survey in 2024. 

Dr. Wente is leading the most significant facility renewal effort since Wake Forest arrived in Winston-Salem in 1956. Recognizing Wake Forest’s cherished sense of place as core to its identity, she has initiated important projects to renew the Reynolda Campus academic core and more effectively leverage its real estate assets to serve the University’s academic and research missions. Since 2023, she has committed more than $2 million to upgrade academic and classroom spaces on Reynolda Campus in six academic buildings. Under her leadership and in partnership with the City of Winston-Salem, the University launched the Baity Street Redevelopment Project, an initiative that will transform the 80 acres of Wake Forest-owned land surrounding the University’s stadiums into a compelling mixed-use development and economic driver for the City of Winston-Salem. 

Since January 2024, Dr. Wente has served as the Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors for the Atlantic Coast Conference, putting Wake Forest at the forefront in a changing landscape for college athletics. In 2022, Dr. Wente was named an ACC Executive Committee member. During her tenure, Demon Deacon student-athletes have won four conference titles across four sports, and the women’s golf program won Wake Forest’s 10th NCAA championship in 2023. Wake Forest baseball returned to the Men’s College World Series in 2023 for the first time since 1955, and the Deacs football program tied a school record by winning 11 games in her first season as Wake Forest’s president in 2021. Additionally, student-athletes are succeeding in the classroom: 339 Deacons earned spots on the 2023-24 ACC Honor Roll, the most in Wake Forest history. Nine programs score a perfect 1,000 in the latest Yearly Academic Progress Rate scores for 2022-23.

Dr. Wente is an internationally renowned biomedical scientist who has maintained an unwavering commitment to research and teaching, mentoring dozens of students and fellows and publishing more than 100 research articles. A pioneer of team-based, cross-disciplinary research, Dr. Wente’s cell biology discoveries have laid the foundation for understanding disease mechanisms and inspired her distinctive leadership philosophy. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation. 

Dr. Wente arrived at Wake Forest in July 2021 after serving as Vanderbilt University’s Provost and interim Chancellor.