Bio
Jennifer Rothschild is the Director of the Educating Character Initiative. She assumed the leadership role in August 2024, succeeding ECI’s inaugural director, Beth Purvis. Rothschild came to the Program for Leadership and Character in the early days of the Educating Character Initiative, serving as the ECI Senior Scholar of Character. During her time as Senior Scholar, the initiative welcomed over 1,000 members to the ECI community; awarded more than $17 million in grants to proposals of remarkable quality from diverse institutions; accumulated hundreds of contact hours with faculty, staff, and administrators at U.S. colleges and universities, building deep relationships around cultivating character; and delivered resources such as webinars and workshops designed to equip educators of character.
A philosopher by training, Jennifer found the field of character education via her academic research interests in ethical theory, the history of ethics, and Aristotelian virtue ethics. Her work focuses primarily on questions about habit, the sociality and unity of virtue, and the constitutions of vicious people. She has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in philosophy and biology from Grinnell College. Prior to joining the Program for Leadership & Character at Wake Forest University, Jennifer spent a decade as faculty in the Philosophy Department at the University of Florida.
Jennifer was born and raised in a small town in Iowa, and currently lives with her husband and two kids in Gainesville, Florida.