Dorian Traube

Dorian Traube serves as the Neidorff Family and Centene Corporation Dean of the Brown School and Professor at Washington University in St. Louis since August 2023. Previously, she was a professor at the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work at the University of Southern California where she served from 2006 until her appointment at WashU. Her leadership spans academic administration, evidence-based research translation, and innovative program development focused on early childhood systems.

Her educational background includes a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley and master's/doctoral degrees in social work from Columbia University. She maintains licensure as a clinical social worker in California and New York.

Traube's research centers on technological solutions for early childhood services, particularly virtual home visitation models. She pioneered Parents as Teachers@USC Telehealth, the first university-based telehealth clinic integrated with a national home visitation program. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this initiative scaled from 1,000 to 600,000 virtual home visits and trained 12,000 home visitors nationwide. Her work demonstrates expertise in leveraging technology to address systemic gaps in children's mental health, maltreatment prevention, and family support systems.

Her research has secured funding from prestigious organizations including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Overdeck Foundation, Parsons Foundation, and Queenscare Foundation. The pandemic response work received multimillion-dollar support from the Heising-Simons Foundation.

• Clinton Global Initiative Named Commitment
• Gary Community Investment/OpenIDEO Early Childhood Innovation Prize

Traube actively contributes to community impact through board service with Good Shepard School, Youth in Need, Parents as Teachers Research Advisory Council, and Hermann Center Institutional Advisory Board. Her leadership philosophy emphasizes the "St. Louis Effect" – leveraging geographic and cultural confluence to drive social innovation. Current initiatives include advancing the Brown School's Driving Equity 2030 plan, establishing debt-free MSW pathways, and creating the Public Exchange to connect academic research with policy implementation.