Daniel Aleshire was elected executive director of The Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada (ATS) in 1998. He first joined the staff in 1990 as an associate director for accreditation and was named associate executive director in 1996 with the responsibility of overseeing the range of the Association's programs and services to its member institutions, in addition to accreditation. From 1992 to 1996, he provided the primary ATS staff leadership to the Quality and Accreditation Project to redevelop the ATS accrediting standards that were adopted by the membership in 1996.

He has held positions of leadership in organizations related to accreditation, including the Commission on Postsecondary Accreditation, the Commission on Recognition of Postsecondary Accreditation, and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation's task force to develop criteria for the non-governmental recognition of accrediting agencies.

An ordained minister, Aleshire holds a BS degree from Belmont College, the MDiv degree from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and an MA degree and PhD in psychology from George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, Tennessee. He served on the faculty of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1978 to 1990 and, before that, as a research scientist at Search Institute in Minneapolis, where he worked on projects related to theological education, church-related higher education, and youth service agencies. Prior to that appointment, he was pastor of Bergen Baptist Church in Waldwick, New Jersey.

Aleshire has written extensively on issues of ministry and theological education, Christian spirituality, and Christian education. He is co-author of Being There: Culture and Formation in Two Theological Seminaries, which received the 1998 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and was published by Oxford University Press in 1997. His articles have appeared in Commonweal, Christian Century, Theological Education, Journal of Supervision in Ministry, Baptist History and Heritage, Dictionary of Pastoral Care, Search, and Review and Expositor.

He and his wife, Jo, are the parents of two children and reside in Pittsburgh, PA.