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Ask the Owl

Meet the Associate Dean of External Relations, Communications, and Corporate Development

Diane McNulty

Diane S. McNulty, PhD
Associate Dean,
External Affairs and Corporate Development
dmcnulty@utdallas.edu | 972-883-2741 | JSOM 4.619

In more than three decades of service to The University of Texas at Dallas, Dr. Diane Seay McNulty began and has built the communications and development departments in the Naveen Jindal School of Management, the largest of UTD’s eight schools. She started and has grown advertising, marketing, public relations, and community and corporate relations. She started MANAGEMENT, the Jindal School’s award-winning magazine. She serves as executive editor of it, of Jindal School Now, the dean’s newsletter, and of Inside Jindal School, the school’s online news site. She oversees social media and podcasts, and takes charge of fundraising strategies, the advisory council and special events. As a faculty member, she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses and serves on several faculty committees.

McNulty teaches corporate governance and ethics in international business courses. Her research efforts focus on those topics as well the study of executive women and their participation on public corporate boards of directors. In 2019, she co-created with the Alliance for Greater Good a certificate program, Executive Leadership for Minority Women in Nonprofits. Earlier she co-founded Positioning Women for Corporate Boards, a Jindal School program.

A lifelong Dallas resident, McNulty earned master’s and doctoral degrees from UT Dallas, and she is devoted to several civic causes as well as UTD. Her professional involvement includes serving on the Board of Directors for the Public Affairs Council, a nonpartisan nonprofit in Washington D.C., as well as on the World Affairs Council of Dallas-Fort Worth, where she was elected to its Mallon Circle. She also has served on the 2021 Gala Committee of Tech Titans, the technology association for North Texas. She has for several years been a member of the Texas Business Hall of Fame Foundation Board of Directors, where she is vice president for scholarship and chairs the Scholarship Committee.

Born with a congenital heart defect, McNulty has had special affinity for the American Heart Association of Dallas for more than 30 years. A past member of the association’s board, she has chaired Côtes du Coeur, its wine auction fundraiser, and she was a founding member of the committee that organized “Stiletto Strut,” a fundraiser that benefited women and heart health for the Women’s Guild of the Dallas Division. The association has honored her with numerous recognitions, including a Distinguished Service Award and the Bachendorf Award of Excellence in 2004 and the 2018 Sandi Haddock Community Impact Award for her work to improve women’s health.

Other awards include being chosen for many years — including 2021 — as a Woman’s Mentor by the Dallas Business Journal and being presented with one of DBJ’s Top 25 Women in Business Awards in 2011. She was presented with the US India Chamber of Commerce DFW’s Outstanding Leadership in Education Award in 2016, and she has received more than a dozen education, marketing and press club awards for MANAGEMENT magazine. In 2021, Dr. McNulty was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the DFW Alliance of Technology and Women.