Administrative Leadership
About Leadership - Dawna Clarke
Dawna Clarke
Senior Assistant Dean of Admissions
Dawna Clarke joined Darden as executive director of Admissions in October 2017.
Clarke previously served as director of admissions at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College for 11 years. Prior to Tuck, from 1990 to 2005, Clarke served in various leadership roles at the Darden School, including five years as admissions director and as director of alumni relations.
Immediately prior to rejoining Darden in 2017, Clarke worked at mbaMission, the MBA consultancy founded by Darden graduate Jeremy Shinewald (MBA ‘03), where she served as chief MBA strategist and senior consultant.
As executive director of admissions, Clarke oversees the recruitment strategy for admission to the full-time MBA and the Executive MBA, which offers an intensive global format, the Global Executive MBA, and sections in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the Washington, D.C., area.
Throughout her career in business education, she has interviewed several thousand business school applicants and reviewed tens of thousands of essays and recommendations. She has traveled frequently throughout Asia, Europe and Latin America, and she has a comprehensive knowledge of various international educational systems and multicultural issues.
Widely known and respected in the world of graduate business education, Clarke has served on multiple committees for the Graduate Management Admissions Council and the Educational Testing Service. She was also a member of the board of directors for the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management for 17 years.
Clarke began her career at Allegheny College and then served as associate director of admissions at Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for three years, where she completed her M.Ed. in higher education administration.
She is also a 2003 graduate of Darden’s The Executive Program (TEP), Darden Executive Education’s flagship executive training program.