LaNitra M. Berger, PhD

LaNitra M. Berger is the senior director of the Office of Fellowships in the Office of Undergraduate Education at George Mason University. In this role, she leads one of only a few fellowships offices in the nation with a social justice focus. LaNitra oversees both graduate and undergraduate fellowships administration at GMU. Throughout her career, she has worked toward helping underrepresented students gain access to transformational educational opportunities. Since coming to Mason in 2010, LaNitra has helped secure more than 60 prestigious national scholarships and fellowships such as the Boren, Fulbright, Truman, and Critical Language Scholarship, many of whom are first-generation, low-income, or minority students. She has received the Spirit of King Award and the Margaret C. Howell Award for her work at Mason to diversify education abroad. LaNitra serves on several education abroad advisory boards, including NAFSA: Association of International Educators, where she is currently the president and board chair, the AIFS Academic Advisory Board, and Globalize DC. She previously served as director of leadership and international programs at the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO), where she organized three national dialogues on diversity in international education, bringing together historically black college presidents, federal agencies, and nonprofit leaders together to improve access to study abroad. LaNitra received her MA and PhD in art history from Duke University and a bachelor’s degree in art history and international relations from Stanford University. She has studied abroad in Paris, was an exchange student at the Free University in Berlin, and conducted field research in Cape Town. She is the author of two books, Exploring Education Abroad: A Guide for Racial and Ethnic Minority Participants (NAFSA, 2016) and the monograph, Irma Stern and the Racial Paradox of South African Modern Art: Audacities of Color (Bloomsbury, December 2020). She is also the editor of Social Justice and International Education: Research, Practice, and Perspectives (NAFSA, 2020).