At the age of thirty, Mallard’s life changed forever when the man she loved so much, her father, suffered from a devastating, fatal stroke. Mallard hesitates as she tells me about this, then continues, “This was one of the most influential moments in my life. Unfortunately, he was never the same after that.” It was difficult for her having to adjust to the man he had become.
“He was just so much different than be-fore,” she recalls with sadness. However, this gave her an opportunity to reflect at an early age upon what her father meant to her in her life. “Most people don’t get that opportunity until it’s too late,” Mallard says regretfully.
The most recent life-changing moment for Dr. Kina Mallard was when she became the president of Reinhardt University in 2015 after serving as Executive Vice Pres-ident and Provost at Carson-Newman University, a private, liberal arts university with about 2,300 students in Jefferson, Tennessee.
Mallard’s first step in the process began when she was contacted by the search firm hired by Reinhardt University to help identify presidential candidates. The firm’s job is to reach out and send information to qualified individuals whom they think would be interested in the job they are trying to hire for; in this case, Reinhardt University was looking to hire a new President, and at the time, Mallard was currently seeking out places to apply for presidency.
Once she researched Reinhardt, it was her colleague, the CFO at Carson-New-man University, who really pushed her and got her excited about the opportunities Reinhardt had to offer her. She went through three separate interviews before being chosen as the new President of Reinhardt University in the Spring of 2015.
Photograph by Jalen Holloman
Photo courtesy of Reinhardt University
Above: Mallard with Husband, Steve Dietz, and dog, Bentley
Below: Mallard enjoying the Convocation of Artists and Scholars
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