The chancellor of Rutgers University-Newark, Cantor is recognized as an advocate for leveraging diversity, re-emphasizing the public mission of colleges and universities as engines of discovery, innovation and social mobility.

Cantor is also established as a leading voice for equitable redevelopment in Newark, working with other anchor institutions such as the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in establishing programs intended to make the city work for all of its citizens. Those efforts are even more important as the city emerges from the pandemic. Many Newark communities were hit especially hard by COVID-19 and a great deal of work remains to heal the physical, cultural and sociological wounds inflicted by the disease and its economic fallout.

Cantor leads efforts to leverage the university’s strengths, particularly its diversity and high-impact research. She previously served chancellor and president of Syracuse University, where her efforts to foster mutually beneficial collective impact initiatives between the university and community earned her the Carnegie Corporation Academic Leadership Award in 2008.