Meet the President

Tiziana Dearing is President of Catholic Charities for the Archdiocese of Boston. The first woman to serve in this role in Boston, she has held the post since September 2007.

Prior to joining Catholic Charities, Ms. Dearing was Executive Director of the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University. In that capacity, Ms. Dearing managed the organization’s operations, as well as writing, speaking, and doing research on nonprofit organizations and civil society.

For a decade before joining the Hauser Center, Ms. Dearing consulted to senior managers in nonprofits and corporations. In 1997, she started her own consultancy, working with nonprofits and specializing in strategy development and implementation, executive decision making and coaching, and large and small group facilitation. Her clients represented organizations local and international, academic and non-profit, and with budgets ranging from one to several hundred million dollars.

Prior to launching her business, Ms. Dearing worked with a management consulting firm specializing in knowledge management, process development and Balanced Scorecard services to Fortune 500 companies. While at the firm, she wrote one of the early knowledge management methodologies. She came to consulting after working for Women’s Self-Employment Project, a nonprofit micro-lending organization in Chicago, Ill.

Ms. Dearing has a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, with concentrations in International Security Policy and Negotiation and Conflict Resolution. She had a merit-based scholarship as a Kennedy School Fellow. She has a BA in English with High Distinction from the University of Michigan.

In addition to her work, Ms. Dearing remains active in her community, including serving on the Board of Directors of the Harvard Cooperative Society, on the Advisory Board of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, on the selection committee of the Quadir Prize – the Annual Global Contest to Strengthen Bangladesh, and as a trustee of the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation. She has published and provided commentary for media outlets such as WBUR/NPR radio, The Boston Globe, MSNBC, BBC Radio, and the Battle Creek Enquirer, and has had a semi-regular column with The Philanthropy News Digest. She also serves on the editorial board of the scholarly journal, The Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly.