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Vice President Adrienne Nazon

A Chicago native, Adrienne Nazon is a marketing and communications executive with more than three decades of experience in higher education and private industry. She was named the inaugural vice president for external relations and communications and joined the University of Illinois System's leadership team in May of 2021.

Along with her system-level responsibilities overseeing the U of I System office for External Relations and Communications (ERC), Nazon works with the system's universities in Urbana-Champaign, Chicago and Springfield and with university-related organizations such as the U of I Foundation and campus-based alumni associations to coordinate unified and complementary communications, government relations and advocacy strategies.

Nazon previously served as vice president of marketing and chief marketing officer for The Ohio State University, where she directed efforts that strengthened the university's brand and increased public awareness and engagement, supporting gains in both enrollment applications and fundraising. She also helped guide a collaborative initiative that brought together units from across the university to create a strategic framework to grow efficiency, effectiveness and impact through the modernization of marketing and communications for today’s evolving markets and audiences.  

From 2005 to 2015, she worked in marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where she earned her MBA and rose to executive director of marketing before being recruited to join Ohio State. At Booth, she established digital marketing from the ground up, rearchitected the school's brand position and helped expand the global footprint of the business school.

Before her career in higher education, Nazon was a marketing executive in private industry in Chicago, working for Kraft Foods; Quaker Oats; the United Distillers and Vintners, a wine and spirits distribution company; and iSYNCH, a Chicago-based startup that became a leader in the global grocery and retail supply chain.

The daughter of first-generation college graduates who both earned master’s degrees and became educators in Chicago, Nazon began her career in information technology after earning her bachelor’s degree in computer systems engineering from Howard University.  

Adrienne Nazon in pink suit