Mary DiStanislao is the executive vice president at Marquette University and oversees the Office of Administration, Department of Human Resources, Division of Student Affairs, and Office of University Planning/University Architect.  She also facilitates university-wide strategic planning in close association with the president and provost.  DiStanislao joined Marquette in 2012 after serving as senior associate director of athletics and the senior women administrator at the University of Pennsylvania.

DiStanislao holds a doctorate in higher education from the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, a master of arts in education from the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University, and an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.

DiStanislao served as an administrator in the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and then for the 12 years preceding her departure for Marquette, held leadership positions in the Division of Recreation and Intercollegiate Athletics at Penn. There, she had direct management responsibilities for more than 100 staff members as part of a department with a budget of approximately $40 million, while also serving as an adjunct professor in the Graduate School of Education. She was also a member of the Provost’s Committee for Academic Planning and Budget.

Her diverse career includes work in private industry and coaching at the Division I level. She was the first women’s basketball coach at Northwestern University, when the sport gained varsity status there in 1975, and was twice named conference coach of the year during her tenure as head women’s basketball coach at the University of Notre Dame in the 1980s.