Donna F. Klepper, EdD

Dr. Donna Klepper joined the Federal Executive Institute as a faculty member in March 2016 after working as an adjunct faculty member at FEI since the mid 1990s. Donna currently serves as faculty for the Leadership for a Democratic Society (LDS) program, facilitating teams, teaching in the program, coaching, and serving as the FEI faculty liaison to the FEI Alumni Association.  She also leads the LDS executive coaching program and serves as faculty for its courses.  She works with the FEI/USAID program team to support he facilitates courses and coaches with USAID programs, and the NOAA leadership programs. Donna is an experienced adult educator, training professional, practitioner, higher education and community leader, committed to and experienced in developing leaders, teams and organizations in the public sector. 

With over thirty years’ experience leading adult continuing education and professional studies organizations and programs and teaching at the college level, Donna spent the first part of her career as a professor and founding director of a community college training and workforce development center, the first of its kind, focused on workforce development at a community college in the Commonwealth of Virginia. In 2001 she moved to the University of Virginia’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies to direct a multi-faceted continuing education and professional studies organization. In 2010, she assumed a new position, directing both academic outreach for UVA and international academic outreach for the School of Continuing and Professional Studies. She retired from her full-time position in June 2016 and continued to consult on academic outreach efforts at UVA.

Donna has extensive experience facilitating and developing teams, teaching, coaching individuals and developing organizations. She is an adjunct faculty member for a nationally recognized leadership program for local government leaders, offered by the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia and has taught organizational behavior for the UVA’s undergraduate internship program and human resource management, organizational behavior and leadership courses for an undergraduate adult degree program. Donna’s graduate degrees were awarded by the University of Virginia in counselor education (M.Ed.) and higher education (Ed.D.). 

Donna has held numerous leadership positions both in the community and in higher education. She is a past chair of the Board of Directors for the Charlottesville-Albemarle Chamber of Commerce (now the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce), a Leadership Charlottesville graduate and awarded the Distinguished Leadership Award by the National Association for Community Leadership. In 2015, she completed a two-year term as the president of the Society of Alumni and a member of its Board of Trustees at her undergraduate alma mater and in 2021 was awarded its Distinguished Alumna Award.