Ilianna Kwaske

Ilianna H. Kwaske, Ph.D. is an industrial/organizational psychologist with over twenty years of experience in higher education and business consulting. Her teaching and higher education administrative roles have primarily been in programs designed for working adults. A passionate educator, Dr. Kwaske has been committed to teaching and learning in various modalities, and she has a strong record of leading high-performing teams that have developed and launched innovative, high-quality academic programs and managing organizational change. With a strong quantitative foundation in assessment and testing, Dr. Kwaske has developed and presented on effective methods of assessing program learning outcomes leveraging instructional technology. 

Dr. Kwaske seeks to affect positive change, as a leader, advisor, and coach to others.  She applies psychology in various contexts and enjoys helping individuals, teams, and organizations, make the most of their talent.  As a consultant to a range of organizations in the private and public sector, Dr. Kwaske has conducted psychological assessments for executive searches, employee selection and development, and she has helped leaders manage organizational change. Dr. Kwaske also served as a principal in her husband’s architecture practice examining the interaction of people and their space. In that role, she directed the programming efforts from a psychological perspective to understand client needs to inform the design of spaces.

From a young age, Dr. Kwaske knew she wanted to be a psychologist and change agent to help solve problems. Like many SoPA students, Dr. Kwaske was a commuter student who worked her way through college and graduate school.  She holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from University of Illinois-Chicago, and a Master of Science in psychology with a specialization in clinical psychology and Ph.D. in industrial-organizational psychology from Illinois Institute of Technology.

The daughter of Cuban immigrants, Dr. Kwaske was born and raised in Chicago, which was her hometown for much of her life. With her husband and their two children, she now enjoys living in New Orleans, a city she grew to love from her first visit in the summer of 2000.     In her free time, Dr. Kwaske likes to run, bake, and stand on her head – not at the same time, of course.