Steve Reifenberg

Steve Reifenberg is the senior strategic advisor of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame, where he is also a teaching professor of international development in the Keough School of Global Affairs and a Kellogg faculty fellow. Previously the Institute’s executive director, he continues to direct the Kellogg-led minor in International Development Studies. His teaching and research interests in international education, international development, and negotiations build upon work carried out in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, including more than a decade living overseas, primarily in Chile. Reifenberg is former co-director of the Keough School’s Integration Lab (i-Lab), part of the Master of Global Affairs program. Reifenberg has been a Kellogg Institute faculty fellow since 2017.

As an educational entrepreneur and builder of academic programs, he engages in innovative pedagogies linking theory and practice to address complex global challenges. He accompanies students to develop nuanced understandings of these challenges, to work effectively on diverse, interdisciplinary teams, and to build practical skills in areas such as international development, design thinking and negotiations. In most of his teaching, his classes partner with social entrepreneurs and international organizations that present real world challenges to student teams. Together with students, he works to co-create spaces and opportunities where students, partners, and the communities they accompany can bring their best selves -- creative, resourceful, authentic, purposeful, and impactful -- to make concrete contributions to the work at hand. 

He has also pioneered new courses such as Designing An Inspired Life, co-taught with the Notre Dame’s Inspired Leadership Initiative (ILI) Director Tom Schreier, as well as LifeDesign: Mindsets, Skillsets, and Habits for a More Joyful and Purposeful Life.

Before coming to Notre Dame in 2010, Reifenberg worked for nearly two decades at Harvard University, serving as executive director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) and subsequently founding and directing the DRCLAS Regional Office in Santiago, Chile. Previously, Reifenberg was the program director for Latin America at the Conflict Management Group and the director of the Edward S. Mason Program in Public Policy and Management at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

The author of Santiago's Children: What I Learned About Life Working at an Orphanage in Chile, Reifenberg continues to be actively involved in Domingo Savio in Santiago, Chile, and serves on the boards of Partners In Health and Education Bridge in South Sudan.

He holds a Master in Public Policy (MPP) from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, an MS in print journalism from Boston University, and a BA in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame.

ISP Advisee:
Elizabeth Eggemeier

KDR Assistant(s):
Clare Cullinan
Makeda Gemechu