Debora L. Spar is the current Senior Associate Dean of Harvard Business School Online and former President of Barnard College, a liberal arts college for women of Columbia University. As President of Barnard, she was also an academic dean within Columbia University. Spar was appointed Barnard's 7th president in July 2008 and replaced Judith Shapiro, Barnard's 6th president, after a teaching career at Harvard Business School where she was Professor of Business Administration and Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development. Spar was appointed the 10th president of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, beginning in March 2017, but announced her resignation in April 2018 after only about one year in the position. She became the new Senior Associate Dean of Harvard Business School Online in January 2020.

Barnard College, officially titled as Barnard College, Columbia University, is a private women's liberal arts college in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a group of women led by young student activist Annie Nathan Meyer, who petitioned Columbia University's trustees to create an affiliated college named after Columbia's then-recently deceased 10th president, Frederick A.P. Barnard. The college is one of the original Seven Sisters—seven liberal arts colleges in the Northeastern United States that were historically women's colleges.