On July 1, 2024, Tom Stritikus began his tenure as the 17th president of Occidental College.
Stritikus comes to Occidental from Fort Lewis College, a public liberal arts college in Durango, Colorado, where he served as president. He brings to Occidental more than three decades of higher education leadership experience, as well as an abiding commitment to values of inclusive excellence and equity.
I am honored to have been selected to lead Occidental, an institution that defines excellence, equity and service. I look forward to collaborating with world-class faculty and staff to engage the Los Angeles community and help students realize the full potential of an immersive liberal arts education.
In his six years at Fort Lewis, Stritikus helped to reinvigorate a campus that served high percentages of first generation students and students of color. He oversaw record increases in fundraising and more than doubled the College’s cash endowment. He also led the college as it embraced its role as a Native American-serving institution, which included engaging with Tribal Nations as partners and reckoning with the college’s complicated history as a former Native American boarding school.
Prior to his presidency at Fort Lewis, he was a deputy director of education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he developed funding plans for initiatives to improve outcomes for low-income students and youth of color nationwide. Before that, he served as the dean of the University of Washington’s College of Education, which US News & World Report ranked as the sixth-best program in the nation during his tenure.
A native of Lincoln, Nebraska, Stritikus is a first-generation college graduate, the son of Greek immigrants. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English and took a job with Teach For America before completing a combined MA/PhD program at UC Berkeley in 2000.
He and his wife Debbie Pfeifer are the parents of twin boys who are college sophomores. Leo attends Dartmouth College, and Hays attends the University of Richmond in Virginia. The fifth family member is Sky, a nine-year-old rescue dog from South Korea.
