Antoinette Hays

Antoinette M. Hays, PhD, RN, is the tenth president of Regis College, a Catholic university in western Massachusetts with more than 3,000 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students.

With nursing degrees from Boston College and Boston University and a doctorate from the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, President Hays is a prominent voice in global health policy, gerontology, and interdisciplinary higher education.

President Hays has spent more than three decades at Regis, first as a faculty member and then the founding dean of the Richard and Sheila Young School of Nursing. She was named a Living Legend in Massachusetts Nursing by the American Nurses Association in 2019. During her tenure President Hays established two additional schools, the School of Health Sciences and the Marshall M. Sloane School of Business and Communication, which join the School of Arts and Sciences and Young School of Nursing.

She guided the university’s development of a strategic focus on graduate health care education. Under President Hays’ leadership, Regis has garnered numerous recognitions for its academic excellence and community engagement. It was named a Center of Excellence in Nursing Education by the National League of Nursing three consecutive times. It has been designated a Top 100 Women-Led Business by The Boston Globe and The Commonwealth Institute each of the past three years. And in 2020, Regis received the Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award, a national honor recognizing U.S. colleges and universities that demonstrate an outstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion.

In fall 2019, Hays oversaw the successful completion of a $40-million fundraising campaign. Phase one of the university’s master plan was completed in 2015 and included the construction of a new residence hall, quad and library renovations that include a learning commons. President Hays is responsible for stewarding the single largest gift in the university’s history, a $5 million donation by the Victor and William Fung Foundation that supports the Fung Scholars Program at Regis.

President Hays launched Regis North, a satellite campus providing educational opportunities to students in the Merrimack Valley. She also spearheaded the development of extensive online programming that has enrolled more than 1,000 students worldwide since the spring of 2017. The university’s online nursing graduate program is ranked 16th nationally.

Her energy and compassion have driven the successful development and funding of the Regis Haiti Project to educate Haitian nursing faculty. She currently serves on the boards of Partners In Health; Trinity Catholic Academy in Brockton, MA; the Association of Colleges of the Sisters of St. Joseph; the Lawrence Partnership; Health eVillages; and is a member the Massachusetts Health Care Collaborative on Health Care Workforce. She is also an active member of the National Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities and the National Council of Independent Colleges.

She has been honored with numerous awards including a two-time honoree of the Thomas F. and Mary J. Shields Founders Award from Trinity Catholic Academy.

President Hays and her husband, John Przybylski, MD, have three adult children, two granddaughters, and one grandson.