Dr Heidi Stalla is part of the senior leadership faculty at KS Insight and brings over two decades of experience in academic leadership, program development, and international education. She recently joined Yale University, first as Dean of Pauli Murray College, and then as Lecturer and Associate Director of Academic Affairs for Yale College.  At KS Insight, she is part of the inaugural design team for the Women Igniting Leadership Lab, focusing on advancing leadership skills through creative and adaptive approaches.

Dr. Stalla has held leadership and faculty roles at several other prestigious institutions worldwide, including Oxford, NYU, NYU Abu Dhabi, and Yale-NUS in Singapore.  With a passion for program building and startup organizations, she was founding director of the writing program at NYU Abu Dhabi, and deputy director of the writing program at Yale-NUS in Singapore.  While at Yale-NUS, Dr. Stalla led several experiential education “leadership labs”, collaborating with faculty across the disciplines to take students on courses in locations as widespread as Maine in the United States, Abu Dhabi, the Philippines, and Borneo.     

Dr. Stalla’s research includes modernist literature; the works of Virginia Woolf; life-writing; and creative nonfiction. Her publications often explore themes of transnational modernism, using creative critical approaches (such as audio essays) to play with the boundaries of literary criticism.  She is currently working on a biography of modernist writer Ling Shu Hua, which involves collaborations with scholars, writers, translators, and artists in Singapore, England, China, and Australia. As a Visiting Scholar at Oxford University’s Centre for Life-Writing, she explored the journeys of Ling Shu Hua’s Friendship Scroll, using it as a lens to study global modernism.

Dr. Stalla has a BA from  Stanford University (where she was a member of the 1997 NCAA Championship tennis team), and a DPhil from Oxford University.  In 2024 she enhanced her leadership expertise through studying Adaptive Leadership with Ronald Heifetz at Harvard University.