Alan Drimmer

Alan Drimmer, PhD, was named the 12th President of Cleary University on July 1, 2021. Dr. Drimmer has an extensive background in higher education, from the classroom to administration, and is thrilled to bring his expertise to Cleary.

It’s his goal to advance Cleary’s distinctive mission based on being flexible, affordable, and career-focused for traditional and non-traditional students alike. He is most excited to raise awareness with students and employers for the Cleary Mind™ initiative, which threads critical workplace competencies in the classroom and across the entire student experience.

In previous roles, Dr. Drimmer served as Provost at National Defense University, Chief Academic Officer and Senior Vice President at the University of Maryland Global Campus and the University of Phoenix, and President at Western International University and American InterContinental University. Over the years, he has been active with institutional accreditors including the Higher Learning Commission, the Southern Association for Colleges and Schools and the Middle States Commission for Higher Education.

Dr. Drimmer is also a Senior Advisor in the Boston Consulting Group’s education practice, and early in his career served as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company. He has experience in corporate training and workforce development, having led the Learning and Development Roundtable at the Corporate Executive Board, a consortium of Chief Learning Officers at Fortune 500 companies.

With BA, MA and PhD degrees in political science from the University of Chicago, Dr. Drimmer also earned an MBA from the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania where he was a Gruss Scholar. He was a National Security Fellow at Harvard University’s Center for International Affairs and won a prestigious Derek Bok Undergraduate Teaching Award at Harvard College.

Dr. Drimmer is married and has four children. He is an avid traveler, wine enthusiast, and baseball fan. In addition, he speaks French and is pursuing scholarly research on Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.