Announcing New Leadership for Ithaka S+R

I’m excited to announce a leadership transition that sets the stage for Ithaka S+R’s next era of impact. On December 31, 2025, Catharine (“Cappy”) Bond Hill will step down as managing director after nine transformative years. On January 1, 2026, Martin Kurzweil, currently vice president at Ithaka S+R, will assume the role of managing director.

Cappy has shaped Ithaka S+R, grown its reach, and raised its national profile and impact. I’m delighted she will remain with us as a senior advisor, contributing her expertise and voice on the value of higher education and the policies that can strengthen it.

Ithaka S+R, under Martin’s leadership, will continue to further ITHAKA’s enduring mission to improve access to education and knowledge, through its work to help colleges and universities, libraries, publishers, policymakers, and philanthropies navigate economic and technological change, connect people to opportunity, and accelerate the creation, preservation, and communication of knowledge. Martin has worked alongside Cappy and therefore is well positioned to build on the many successes of Cappy’s tenure. He brings the leadership and results-driven focus that will carry us forward to even further mission impact.

Celebrating Cappy Hill’s remarkable legacy

Cappy has strengthened Ithaka S+R as a trusted source of research and strategic insight for leaders across education, scholarly communication, and economic policy. During her tenure, Ithaka S+R grew from a small team with 13 staff members into a multi-disciplinary team of 50+ people working across every part of postsecondary education—from access and student learning to research and knowledge sharing. Ithaka S+R has become a leading voice in setting national priorities and giving policymakers and practitioners the evidence they need to make change, and often providing the technical assistance and leadership to do it.

Catharine Bond Hill, John B. King, Jr. and David Brooks at the ATI Presidential Summit

Cappy’s own research has illuminated how institutions and policymakers can make learning more affordable, accessible, and effective. Her deep insights, practical advice, and tireless advocacy on expanding opportunity for lower-income students at selective colleges and universities have shaped national conversations about how to expand educational attainment and economic mobility. Publications such as Measuring the Economic Value of a Liberal Education and Solving Stranded Credits have guided reform and investment decisions across the public and philanthropic sectors, while Aligning the Research Library to Organizational Strategy demonstrated new paths forward for academic libraries in supporting the evolving missions of their institutions. Cappy’s work on university endowments, their contributions to the public good, and the implications of recent policy changes have proved timely. By initiating a new justice initiatives program, Cappy has also worked to expand access to knowledge, education, and cultural expression for incarcerated people.

“Cappy has led with brilliance, deep knowledge, and a collaborative spirit. Her ideas have informed the strategies and success of countless colleges and universities around the country. Above all she’s been an extraordinary partner and a voice of conscience. It’s exciting that this next chapter of her career will allow her to focus on some of the topics most important to her and our country like college opportunity, liberal arts excellence, and learning for the incarcerated.”
– Daniel R. Porterfield, President and CEO of the Aspen Institute

Now, as she transitions to the role of senior advisor, Cappy will continue to focus on areas that connect educational opportunity, leadership, and innovation, including trustee education, liberal-arts renewal, higher education in prison, and veterans’ access to learning and career advancement.

When Cappy joined Ithaka S+R in 2016, after serving on ITHAKA’s Board of Trustees from 2012 to 2016, she brought a deep commitment to expanding educational opportunity and a remarkable record of institutional transformation. As president of Vassar College (2006–2016), she led a decade of progress that earned national recognition for improving access and affordability. She reinstated need-blind admissions, replaced loans with grants for low-income students, and launched the groundbreaking Posse Veterans Program, opening doors for service members to pursue higher education at Vassar and other selective colleges and universities. Under her leadership, Vassar won the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation’s inaugural $1 million prize for Excellence in Educational Access, and the college became a national model for expanding opportunity through the liberal arts.

“Leading Ithaka S+R has been one of the great privileges of my career. Working with such talented colleagues and partners to expand opportunity through education and to strengthen the systems that make knowledge more accessible has been deeply rewarding. I’m excited to continue contributing to this vital work in my new role.”
– Catharine Bond Hill

Before her Vassar presidency, Cappy served as provost and professor of economics at Williams College. She also served as a trustee of Yale University from 2013 to 2024.  She is currently an independent trustee of Putnam Investments and on the boards of the Warrior-Scholar Project and Bard College, as well as the President’s Council of the University of the People.

A shared commitment to research and impact

For nearly a decade, Cappy and Martin have worked hand in hand to build a research and advisory service at Ithaka S+R that connects evidence to action. Together they have co-authored numerous publications and op-eds exploring how institutions and systems can expand learning opportunities and strengthen outcomes for students and communities. As one example of their joint impact, Cappy and Martin co-lead a popular seminar on national trends in higher education for the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Strategic-Leadership Program, helping hundreds of department chairs, deans, and library leaders understand and respond to the forces shaping postsecondary education.

Their partnership has made Ithaka S+R a trusted resource for academic, workforce, and library leaders, as well as policymakers and philanthropic funders working to expand educational and economic opportunity. They focused Ithaka S+R’s research, policy, and intervention work on stranded credits, which spurred reform of transcript-withholding policies and led to the creation of the Ohio College Comeback Compact, a model for helping adult learners return to college and complete degrees. One of their signature achievements is the creation and continuing success of the American Talent Initiative (ATI), which Ithaka S+R has managed with the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program since 2016. ATI’s design grew in part from Cappy’s economic research and her leadership at Vassar and from Martin’s earlier scholarship with William G. Bowen and Eugene Tobin in Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education. Today, ATI includes nearly 140 colleges and universities working to enroll and graduate substantially more students from lower-income backgrounds, and is one of the most visible examples of Ithaka S+R’s influence on national policy and practice.

“Through his work on stranded credits, transfer, and the American Talent Initiative, Martin Kurzweil has brought national attention to the numerous challenges students face on their pathway to a degree and the policies that states, systems, and institutions can enact to ensure that more students are able to access a college education and attain a credential of value.”
– John B. King, Chancellor, State University System of New York

Welcoming Martin Kurzweil to the helm

Since launching the Educational Transformation program in 2015, Martin has built a dynamic and influential portfolio of work focused on understanding what drives learner success and helping educational institutions design and implement policies, technologies, and strategies that expand opportunity.

Among other signature projects, Martin led the creation of Transfer Explorer, first at the City University of New York, and now as a first-of-its-kind national platform that makes the transferability and applicability of prior learning transparent and usable for students and institutions across the country. His body of work at Ithaka S+R extends to studies on non-degree credentials and pathways, the responsible use of student data, and postsecondary education quality-assurance frameworks that support continuous improvement.

A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Martin’s career has included stints in legal practice and academia, but his heart–and almost 20 years of his professional life–has been in education research and policy. His prior roles include serving as a research associate at the Mellon Foundation (collaborating with ITHAKA’s founding Board chair, William Bowen), as senior executive director for research, accountability, and data at the New York City Department of Education, and as an academic fellow at Columbia Law School.

“Ithaka S+R is uniquely positioned to turn research into real-world solutions. Over more than a decade, I’ve seen first-hand how Ithaka S+R’s exceptional team has worked with states, foundations, and colleges and universities to open more pathways to opportunity and to advance how knowledge is created and shared. I’m deeply grateful to Cappy Hill for her extraordinary leadership and to Kevin Guthrie for his vision and trust. As managing director, I look forward to continuing to deepen our impact.”
– Martin Kurzweil

Looking ahead

This leadership transition represents both continuity and renewal. Cappy’s bold and thoughtful stewardship has made Ithaka S+R an essential contributor of research insights and change management across the academic, cultural, and policy sectors. Martin’s appointment signals a new phase—one that will deepen collaborations with educational, workforce, and policy leaders and build on Ithaka S+R’s commitment to making knowledge and opportunity more widely shared.

We are grateful for Cappy’s enduring contributions, inspired by Martin’s leadership, and excited for the opportunities ahead.