Finance and Administration
Executive Dean
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Sara Walsh
Sara Walsh serves as the Executive Dean of Finance and Administration for Brown University School of Public Health and advises the Dean on strategic and financial planning. She is responsible for resource allocation decisions, long-term financial planning and policies, a dynamic administrative structure, IT infrastructure, and innovative space planning to meet the growing needs and support the School’s mission.
Dean Walsh leads the School of Public Health’s Office of Budget, Finance and Planning, Office of Human Resources, Office of Operations, and the Administrative Cores. Dean Walsh believes in creating responsive, highly capable, and resilient organizations to meet the needs of faculty, the university, and each other.
There is a natural friction between academics and administration. We are at our best when this friction becomes the magic that lights a match. It is my job to create an environment for that magic. We must work with our colleagues to be innovative, have the capacity to pivot and provide effective guardrails that create the conditions for success.
Executive Dean of Finance and Administration
Before joining the School of Public Health, Sara Walsh served for 12 years in financial and operational leadership roles at Brown University within the Office of the Provost, Dean of the College, and in the Division of Finance. She has been an integral part of system optimization including Workday HCM, Financials, Academics, and Adaptive Insights. She led the effort to create Academic Finance and Administration (AFA), an organization that brought together financial and transactional needs of many offices including the Office of the Provost, Office of the President, Dean of the Faculty, Vice President for Research, Graduate School, University Library and others. She led the campaign adjudication process with Advancement, Provost, and Finance, as well as process improvement initiatives within the Finance Division. She was an integral leader in the university’s transition to a zero-base-budget process.
Prior to joining Brown University, Sara Walsh worked as an analyst at Hasbro Inc. and the Vanguard Group. She earned her MS in Finance from Suffolk University Sawyer School of Business, and her BS in Business from the Boston University Questrom School of Management.