Kaitlin Leach joined the Vassar athletics department during the summer of 2017, coming to Vassar College after a four-year stint at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana.
Leach is in charge of compliance while at Vassar, while helping to maintain and further develop the Brewer’s budding Vassar RISE program. Leach will be tasked with developing and implementing rules education programing, while also organizing student-athlete welfare activities including leadership and career development, peak performance and health and wellness education. Leach will also coordinate programming to promote success, retention and recruitment of underrepresented students and staff.
The 2008 College of Mount Saint Vincent graduate will have sport supervision as well, and will look to bring her experiences from Earlham College and College of Saint Elizabeth to Vassar College. While at Earlham, Leach served as the Senior Associate Director of Athletics and Senior Woman Administrator, also spending time as an Associate Director of Athletics as well.
Leach oversaw eight sport programs as a member of the Earlham athletics department, helping guide the sports marketing and communications office, student employees and department interns. Leach helped develop recruitment strategies in collaboration with campus admissions and coaching staffs to attract high-performing student-athletes.
She was an active member of the Earlham community, serving on the academic advisory and strategic planning committees, and taught the “Training for Academic Success” course for freshmen student-athletes. In 2015, she led a Quaker contingent that teamed up with Wayne County Special Olympians in a unified bowling league with schools from the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference.
Leach is a member of Women Leaders in College Sports, and in 2012, was selected for the then-NACWAA Mentor Program. She has both served as a presenter and a facilitator for the NCAA Career in Sports Forum, was twice an administrator at the NCAA National Student-Athlete Development Conference and participated at multiple CHAMPS/Life Skills conferences.??
She has served as a Title IX investigator, coordinated game day operations, participated in college-wide strategic planning and worked alongside development efforts to raise monies for facility improvements.
Before Earlham, she was an Assistant Director of Athletics, Sports Information Director and Senior Woman Administrator at the College of Saint Elizabeth in Morristown, NJ from 2008-11 before being promoted to Associate Director of Athletics from 2011-13. Leach supervised many aspects at Saint Elizabeth, including advising the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC).
Leach monitored the fitness and aquatic center including budget, schedule, employment, maintenance, along with handling all sports information and public relations duties. She was also an assistant swim coach for two years from 2008-10.
During her time as an undergraduate, Leach was a three-year team captain for the varsity basketball team at CMSV, also playing varsity tennis for the Dolphins. Leach graduated with a B.S. in Business with a concentration in Management in May 2008, earning the Marketsmith, Inc. Award for Entrepreneurship as well. Leach would then attain her M.S. in Management in December 2010 from Saint Elizabeth, concentrating in Organizational Change.
Leach, who is married to her partner Kyle with their daughter Sadi and sons Kai and Beau, is a native of nearby Red Hook, NY.
