Ricardo Azziz

Principal, SPH Consulting Group

With over twenty-five years of leadership experience, throughout his career Ricardo Azziz has been actively engaged in ensuring institutions reach their greatest potential. He served as president of Georgia Health Sciences University, leading the merger and alignment of various clinical entities to create the state’s only public academic health system, now Augusta University Health System. He also led the merger of Georgia Health Sciences University and Augusta State University that resulted in Georgia Regents University (now Augusta University), serving as founding president. He served as senior executive within the State University of New York (SUNY) system administration, overseeing a more nearly $4 billion portfolio, and as member of the Board of Trustees of the Southern Association of Colleges & Schools-Commission on Colleges (SACS-COC). He also served as founding director of the SUNY Hispanic Leadership Institute, a unique initiative aimed at enhancing the capacity of emerging higher education leaders to serve as university and college executives and presidents. Among other books, he is co-author of Strategic Mergers in Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), a seminal work in our understanding of major institutional transformation. He is a sought out thought leader in the arenas of higher education governance and administration, university/college presidency, change management, institutional restructuring, diversity, equity and inclusion, leadership development, and academic health. Among other venues, he has written for and his work has been cited by the Huffington Post, TIME magazine, the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Atlanta Constitution, Forbes, US News & World Report (USNWR), The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Education, the Atlanta Business Chronicle, University Business (UB) Magazine, Change: The Magazine of Higher Education, Academic Minute, Georgia Trend, Insight into Diversity magazine, The Presidency magazine of ACE, Public Purpose magazine of AASCU, the TIAA Institute, and Diverse magazine. Dr. Azziz leads the SPH Consulting Group to ensure that our clients and partners receive the individualized attention and support they require to ensure the successful consideration, partner vetting, identification and negotiation, and implementation of the desired restructuring opportunity.