Carmen Twillie Ambar (born July 3, 1968) is an American lawyer and academic. She has been the president of Oberlin College since 2017.
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Early life and education
Ambar is a native of Little Rock, Arkansas. Her father Manuel Twillie picked cotton on a farm in Arkansas and became a school principal, and her mother Gwendolyn Brown Twillie earned a Ph.D. in dance at Texas Woman's University, leaving home for a year when her children were young. Her mother later chaired the Theatre and Dance Department at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
She holds a bachelor's degree in foreign service from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and earned both a master's degree in public affairs from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and a J.D. degree from Columbia Law School in 1994.
Career
Ambar formerly served as board chair for the Public Leadership Education Network and was vice-chair of the New Jersey Commission on the Status of Women. She served as assistant dean at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University from 2000-2002. Ambar was appointed by Governor Corzine to the New Jersey Economic Development Authority Board of Directors in 2006.