Sonia Feigenbaum, Ph.D.

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Dr. Sonia Feigenbaum joined the University of Texas at Austin in 2019 as the inaugural senior vice provost for global engagement and chief international officer. During her tenure, she has led the rebranding of Texas Global to reflect a broader vision for global engagement at the University of Texas and created a comprehensive virtual institutional global presence. She restructured and expanded operations to maximize growth by creating new units, including Global Engagement and Strategy, Global Initiatives and Alumni Relations, and Global Programs and Innovation. In 2020, Dr. Feigenbaum led the vision for the publication of the first university biennial global engagement report. In 2021, UT Austin received the prestigious Senator Paul Simon Award for Comprehensive Internationalization. In 2022, she launched the first UT Austin Global Gateway in Mexico City. Dr. Feigenbaum has raised over $65 million to implement on- and off-campus internationalization programs and negotiated new contracts with international partners in the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Panama, India, and Saudi Arabia.

She has developed and implemented major funding initiatives to support transnational research, campus internationalization events, global virtual exchanges, international internships, and publications in languages other than English. She also led the creation of a fund to aid displaced scholars and students. To date, Texas Global has awarded $2.4 million in grants to 18 colleges and schools at the University of Texas at Austin, working with partners in 63 countries. She has formed strategic alliances with top-ranked institutions in France, Mexico, Taiwan, Korea, Spain, Germany, Japan, and she established an Institut des Amériques pôle on the UT campus.

Before joining the University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Feigenbaum served as associate vice chancellor for international engagement and global strategies and senior international officer at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). While at UNL, Dr. Feigenbaum advanced internationalization by building strategic global partnerships, enhancing globally focused academic programs for students and faculty, and increasing institutional global visibility. She led efforts to expand and better serve international scholars and students, foster greater cross-cultural engagement on campus, and secure external funding to support on-campus internationalization efforts. She also launched an initiative to expand students’ global competencies through synchronous collaborative online learning with peers across the globe; developed and implemented new scholarship modes for education abroad opportunities to expand access; and secured funding from the U.S. Department of State, the Stevens Initiative, and the Argentina and German Fulbright Commissions, among others.

Dr. Feigenbaum was also associate provost for global engagement at Brown University, director of the Hispanic-Serving Institutions and International and Foreign Languages Divisions at the U.S. Department of Education, and deputy director of Public Programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her extensive background in policymaking related to global initiatives spans academia and nearly 15 years of service with the federal government, where she managed budgets exceeding $250 million, as well as experience in the nonprofit sector. Dr. Feigenbaum earned her undergraduate degree in music performance (cello) and master’s and doctoral degrees in Spanish from Indiana University, Bloomington. She is a native speaker of French and Spanish, proficient in Portuguese, Italian, and Russian, and is currently studying Korean.

Read our news story, Texas Global Leader Sees Promise Ahead for UT International Endeavors to learn more about Sonia's vision for global engagement at UT Austin.