[2] Neils attended Northrop Collegiate School in Minneapolis and earned her AB magna cum laude with Honors in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College in 1972.
After graduating she was part of the team excavating the Etruscan site of Poggio Civitate (Murlo) under the auspices of Bryn Mawr.
She earned a master's degree first class in archaeology at the University of Sydney and spent several summers working with the Australians at the site of Torone in northern Greece.
Neils was awarded an MFA (1977) and PhD (1980) from Princeton University where she studied art history and classical archaeology.
Neils has served as Vice-President for Publications of the Archaeological Institute of America, as a trustee of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, and as an Overseer of the Gennadius Library.