Gloria Cordes Larson
First Female President of Bentley University
Former President of Harvard Graduate School of Education
Gloria Cordes Larson is a Boston business leader, respected lawyer, public policy expert, and former university president. From 2007 until 2018, Larson served as the first female President of Bentley University, Following her eleven year tenure, she served a one year term as President in Residence at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has served as a director on multiple public company boards, including her current service on the board of Unum Group, where she chairs the Governance Committee. In addition, Larson serves on the board of reacHIRE, a private company devoted to supporting women in the workplace. She also is a member of the boards of several national and regional non-profit organizations, including NACD New England, McLean Hospital, the MA Conference for Women, the Executive Committee of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, the Mary Christie Institute, and the Alumni Law Council for the University of Virginia School of Law. In 2021, Larson was appointed to the Board of Regents of UMass Global, a non-profit affiliate of UMass that will deliver expanded online education opportunities to adult learners throughout the US and globally.
From 2007 until June 2018, Larson served as the President of Bentley University, located in Waltham, MA. During her tenure, Bentley achieved university status, further deepened its distinctive integration of business and the liberal arts, was named a Top 10 undergraduate business school by Bloomberg Businessweek, and was ranked #1 in the country for both career services and internship programs by The Princeton Review. In 2011, Larson launched the Center for Women and Business (CWB) at the university, with a stated mission to advance women in the organizational world. The Bentley Board of Trustees named the CWB in her honor when she stepped down from her role as president. While at Bentley, Larson authored the book PreparedU: How Innovative Colleges Prepare Students for Success, published in 2016 by Jossey-Bass, a division of Wiley.
Before joining Bentley, Larson had a wide ranging career in law, public policy and business. She served as a partner and Co-chair of the Government Strategies Group at the Boston based law firm, Foley Hoag, LLP; as Secretary of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation, and later as Secretary of Economic Affairs, under Massachusetts Governor William F. Weld; and as Deputy Director of Consumer Protection for the Federal Trade Commission in Washington.
Larson has received numerous awards and honors throughout her career, including being named to the “Power 50” by both the Boston Business Journal and Boston Magazine; awarded the Greater Boston Chamber’s Distinguished Bostonian, Collaborative Leadership, and Pinnacle awards; listed in the “top ten” of The Commonwealth Institute’s roster of the Boston Globe Magazine’s Top 100 Women-led businesses in Massachusetts; and awarded the 2018 Ellen M. Zane Award for Visionary Leadership from Tufts Medical Center. In 2019, she received a Woman of the Year Award from the Wentworth Institute of Technology. Also in 2019, Larson was named one of the University of Virginia School of Law’s One Hundred Change Agents, recognizing those alumni who have made a distinctive impact in the world over the course of the law school’s 200 year history. In 2021, she was named a NACD Directorship Top 100 honoree.
Larson received her Bachelor of Arts with honors from Vassar College and earned her Juris Doctorate from the University of Virginia School of Law. She is the recipient of three Honorary Doctorate degrees from Bentley University, Northeastern University, and Wachusetts Community College. She is married to Allen Larson, an attorney, and their family includes two English Labrador Retrievers, Sally and Olive.