Emily Updegraff
Chief of Staff
Emily Updegraff, PhD, joined The Graduate School (TGS) in September 2019 as the Chief of Staff. In this role, she is responsible for the school’s human resources administration, strategic communications, and daily operations. She facilitates communication within TGS and with other Northwestern schools and partners and serves as a strategic adviser to the dean and associate provost for graduate education. Prior to coming to TGS, Emily spent nine years as the director of operations & outreach/assistant chair in Northwestern's Department of Physics & Astronomy at Northwestern, where she managed a broad portfolio of responsibilities including faculty and financial affairs, facilities, student recruitment, and teaching assignments. Emily has also taught physiology and cell biology courses for the School for Professional Studies since 2011.
Emily completed her PhD at the University of Chicago, where she studied reproductive processes in the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana. She was a 2015 staff leadership fellow in the Kellogg School of Management’s Executive Education Program.