Baishakhi Taylor is a Senior leader at NYU Abu Dhabi and oversees the Division of Student Affairs. Taylor holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Kentucky. Before joining NYU Abu Dhabi, Taylor served as the Dean of the College at Smith College in Massachusetts.Baishakhi joined Smith College from Middlebury College, where she served as Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students and as Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies. During her tenure at Middlebury, Taylor co-led the Alliance for Inclusive Middlebury, a presidential committee charged with developing a strategic plan for making inclusion a priority for the institution. Before her work at Middlebury, Taylor served as the associate dean of Trinity College of Arts and Sciences at Duke University and the program director of DukeEngage-Kolkata.

She was also a member of the faculty at the Duke Center for South Asian Studies.