Rame Hanna

Arriving at RISD in spring 2025, Rame Hanna brings to our community more than a decade’s experience in cultivating cross-campus connections and fostering supportive communities within higher education. Hanna employs a systematic approach to helping organizations that effectively align values of social equity and inclusion to actions and aims to center the voices and lived experiences of community members from all backgrounds while creating spaces that encourage self-reflection and dialogue.

Prior to RISD, Hanna most recently served as the inaugural vice chancellor for Inclusive Culture and Belonging at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, where he chaired a campus-wide body that engaged senior administrators, faculty, staff, student leaders, and community partners in aligning diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) initiatives with institutional goals. This council provided a platform for diverse voices, bridged gaps between campus constituencies and enabled collaborative efforts to create a more inclusive campus culture.

Under Hanna’s leadership, UCCS received several national designations, including LGBTQ+ Friendly Campus, Military-Friendly School, Military-Friendly Spouse School, Age-Friendly University, and First-Generation Forward Institution. Hanna also established a scholarship and grant fund at UCCS to support programs aligned with the university’s strategic vision for DEIB. In addition, he worked with local Indigenous nations to introduce UCCS’s first official land acknowledgment, developed a mindfulness calendar to enhance cultural awareness, and worked with the Department of Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) to host the first artist residency centering disability art and culture.

Previous to UCCS, Hanna served as director of Diversity and Inclusive Excellence at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he promoted faculty and staff agency and social responsibility through learning opportunities, partnered with the provost to attract, develop and retain diverse faculty, and led an inaugural council to cultivate shared responsibility for strengthening institutional DEIB transformation efforts. Hanna has also held roles at Olin College of Engineering, College of the Holy Cross and Dartmouth College, where he led DEIB and compliance initiatives.

Hanna holds a BA in Law and Society from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an MS in Student Affairs in Higher Education from Colorado State University. He is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado, pursuing a degree in Educational Leadership, Research and Policy. His research focuses on the intersections of social justice education, leadership development and organizational change, with an emphasis on fostering a culture of belonging across institutions of higher education.