About
Shirley M. Collado, Ph.D.

Shirley M. Collado, Ph.D., is President and CEO of College Track and former President of Ithaca College. She is a nationally recognized higher education leader, executive, advisor and advocate. Throughout her 30-year career, Dr. Collado has held multiple leadership positions across the higher education sector, as a practicing academic, a college administrator and senior executive. This includes leadership roles at The Posse Foundation, Middlebury College, Lafayette College, Rutgers University and, most notably, Ithaca College, which she led as President from July 2017 to August 2021.

 

Since January 2022, Dr. Collado has held the position of President and Chief Executive Officer of College Track, a national college completion organization that partners with first-generation students through high school, college and into the early stages of their careers. Alongside her leadership at College Track, she also serves her sector as an experienced and sought-after board member and advisor to multiple organizations and institutions across the United States.

 

Throughout these varied roles and positions of leadership, Dr. Collado’s career has been shaped by a single, clear belief: that first-generation college students have the talent, ambition and potential to succeed, but they lack the systems, relationships and resources that make college completion possible. Shaped by her own experiences as a first-generation college graduate, her work has been resolutely focused on changing these conditions and widening the path of opportunity for underserved students whose ability is often underestimated and overlooked.

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"In five years, I know College Track’s identity as the most comprehensive college completion program will be widely affirmed. We will serve thousands more students across the nation in partnership with colleges and universities that truly walk the walk of educational justice. Our role as a valued collaborator and visionary partner will have precipitated a sea change in higher education, creating the right sets of conditions for students from all walks of life to thrive, graduate from college, and launch into meaningful careers."  Dr. Shirley Collado at Emerson Collective's Demo Day 2022. 

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Early life & education: breaking barriers at home

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A proud New Yorker, Dr. Collado was born and raised in Brooklyn to parents who immigrated from the Dominican Republic in the 1950s. Like many blue-collar immigrant families in the 1970s and 1980s, a four-year college education for their children was an aspiration that seemed beyond reach.
 

But that changed in 1990 when Dr. Collado, alongside her mother and four other high school students and their mothers, took a 26-hour bus ride from New York to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Dr. Collado made the trip to Vanderbilt as a member of the inaugural cohort of the Posse Foundation, a nonprofit that provides full tuition to students from underserved backgrounds with extraordinary academic and leadership potential.
 

“My career has been all about who gets on that bus in the first place, who is there to support you along the way, and what conditions need to be in place to ensure all students thrive once they arrive on their college campus and realize their biggest dreams.” Shirley M. Collado, Vanderbilt University, November 2025.

 

As a Posse scholar, she was able to realize her academic potential and graduate from Vanderbilt with full honors in Human and Organizational Development & Psychology in 1994. In doing so, Dr. Collado became the first in her family to earn a bachelor's degree, achieving a long-held dream for her and her family. That experience had a defining influence on her career.

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2001-2010: returning to The Posse Foundation, leadership at Middlebury College & Lafayette College

After a practicing academic career, Dr. Collado returned to The Posse Foundation in April 2001, the same organization that took her to Vanderbilt as a first-generation scholar just a decade earlier. Joining with a determination to give back to the Foundation that had given her so much, she spent nearly six years as its Executive Vice President, taking an active leadership role in expanding its work across multiple sites and campuses. Alongside Posse’s President and Founder, she co-led the Foundation’s first strategic plan, providing a strong foundation for the organization that continues to thrive and grow today. This would not be her last connection to The Posse Foundation; she joined its Board of Trustees in 2014.

 

In 2007, Dr. Collado moved to Middlebury College, a private liberal arts college in Vermont, as Vice President for Institutional Planning and Diversity until 2008, and then as Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of the College from 2010 to 2015. Her experience also extended to Lafayette College, where she continued to work across student success, institutional planning and academic leadership before taking on a broader operational role at Rutgers University-Newark.​​

 

2010-2015: Rutgers University-Newark
 

Dr. Collado later joined Rutgers University-Newark as executive vice chancellor and chief operating officer in 2010, a role that broadened her leadership experience within a large public research university. The position placed her at the center of campus operations, strategic initiatives and institutional planning, with responsibility for helping translate a wider university vision into practical systems, structures and decisions.
 

Rutgers-Newark also strengthened a dimension of her work that would later define both her presidency and nonprofit leadership: the relationship between higher education and civic life. Working in a diverse urban institution, she saw how universities can operate not only as academic centers, but as anchors for opportunity, mobility and local partnership. That experience deepened her focus on institutional responsibility and on the conditions that allow students from underrepresented backgrounds to succeed.

 

2017-2021: Ithaca College Presidency   

In 2017, Dr. Collado became the ninth president of Ithaca College, a private liberal arts college in New York State. In doing so, she became the first person of color to lead the College and the first Dominican-American in the United States to serve as president of a four-year institution.

 

“I am incredibly honored and humbled to become Ithaca College’s ninth president,” Shirley Collado, Ithaca College, 2018.
 

At Ithaca, Dr. Collado led the creation and implementation of Ithaca Forever, a strategic plan focused on student success, financial sustainability and institutional excellence. Her presidency coincided with pressure across American higher education, including the COVID-19 pandemic, national conversations about equity and inclusion and questions about the model for private residential colleges. At the conclusion of her tenure, Ithaca College named her President Emerita.

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Her work at Ithaca required balancing long-term planning with immediate pressures facing private colleges, including affordability, demographic change, student well-being, inclusion and financial sustainability. The Ithaca Forever plan gave the college a framework for making decisions across academic programs, student support, operations and community engagement, while also asking the institution to think more clearly about its future role and priorities.
 

The presidency also gave Dr. Collado direct experience leading through disruption. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she guided Ithaca College through a period of uncertainty for students, faculty, staff and families. That period sharpened her belief that leadership in higher education depends on clear priorities, direct communication and a willingness to make difficult decisions in service of an institution’s long-term mission.

2022-present: President & CEO of College Track
 

In January 2022, Dr. Collado began her tenure as President and Chief Executive Officer of College Track, a national college completion organization that supports first-generation students from high school through college graduation and into the early stages of their careers. The role brought together the central themes of her career: student access, institutional partnership, operational leadership and a belief that higher education remains one of the most powerful routes to opportunity.

 

“In this moment in our country, it is more important than ever to invest in promising youth early in their path. Given my experience working to increase equity in private and public institutions across sectors of education, it is an honor to partner with Laurene Powell Jobs who for years has strived to increase urgency around this college access and student success—whether through her work at Emerson Collective or with College Track—knowing that a college education is directly related to larger systemic changes across our society.” Dr. Collado, College Track, September 2021.
 

At College Track, Dr. Collado leads work that is deliberately long-term. The organization makes a 10-year commitment to its scholars, beginning before college admission and continuing through graduation and career launch. That model reflects her view that access alone is not enough; students must also have the academic, financial, social and professional support required to persist and complete a degree.
 

Her leadership has focused on strengthening College Track’s national platform, deepening partnerships with colleges and universities and helping more students convert college ambition into college completion. She has also become a public voice on the need to rebuild confidence in higher education by making degrees more affordable, more attainable and more clearly connected to meaningful careers.
 

Board service & national engagement
 

Alongside her executive roles, Dr. Collado has built a national profile through board service and sector engagement. She is Trustee Emerita of Vanderbilt University, her alma mater, following a decade of service on the university’s Board of Trust from 2014 to 2024. That distinction reflects a long relationship with Vanderbilt, beginning with her arrival as part of the inaugural cohort of Posse Scholars and continuing through governance and alumni leadership.
 

Dr. Collado’s wider board and advisory work spans organizations focused on education access, student opportunity and institutional change. She has served with organizations including Excelencia in Education, IntermediaryEd, the National Association for College Admission Counseling, Kids First Chicago and StarRez, and is a founding member of Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration.
 

She is also a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, an honorary chair of The Mariposa DR Foundation, and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences’ Commission on Opportunities After High School. These roles reflect the breadth of her work across higher education, philanthropy, nonprofit leadership and student mobility.
 

Advocacy in higher education
 

Dr. Collado’s advocacy for higher education is grounded in both personal experience and institutional leadership. She has argued consistently that college remains a powerful engine of social and economic mobility, particularly for first-generation students and students from under-resourced communities. Her work does not simply defend higher education as it exists; it asks colleges, nonprofits, funders and employers to build systems that are more responsive to the realities of students’ lives.
 

A recurring theme in her leadership is that first-generation students should not be treated as a problem to be solved. Instead, she has focused on the conditions around them: the cost of attendance, the complexity of financial aid, uneven access to advising, questions of belonging and the gap between college completion and career opportunity. This perspective has shaped her work across Posse, Middlebury, Rutgers-Newark, Ithaca College and College Track.
 

Education & personal life
 

Dr. Collado earned her bachelor’s degree in human and organizational development and psychology from Vanderbilt University in 1994. She went on to earn master’s and doctoral degrees in clinical psychology from Duke University. That academic grounding in human development, identity and resilience has informed much of her work with students, institutions and communities.
 

She lives in Oakland, California with her husband, A. Van Jordan, an award-winning poet and professor at Stanford. Through her public work and private life, she has remained closely connected to the experiences that shaped her own path: family, education, community and the belief that opportunity should not depend on background or circumstance.​

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Shirley Collado: 60-Second Interview

 

1. What is the best thing about your role at College Track?

 

The people – colleagues, partners, donors, scholars. Much of life is about people, relationships and connection – and the wonderful thing about working for a nonprofit like College Track is the underlying value that everyone holds to do meaningful work and catalyze change. I also cherish seeing our scholars graduate – I feel the pride viscerally because I know firsthand the mountain they have climbed to get there.   

 

2. What does being a leader mean to you?

 

Leadership is a privilege and an honor. I see my role to inspire, to lead by example, and to make a difference. I aspire to be the type of leader I would have wanted to work with at the start of my career.
 

3. What achievement are you most proud of?
 

I take pride in all my achievements. There have been milestones that mean a great deal to me. Returning to Posse was a full circle moment. Of course, taking on the presidency of Ithaca College during such an important time was an honor, and more recently, I’m proud of everything we’re undertaking at College Track every single day.

4. How do you spend time away from work?

 

My husband and I enjoy travel, so we like to get away together as much as we can. That is time to recenter, take stock and reflect. We recently took a trip to Italy, which was a real highlight for us both.

 

5. Finally, East or West Coast?

 

That is a tough call. California has been my adopted home for nearly five years, and I love it here. But Brooklyn sits at the very heart of who I am; any New Yorker would tell you the same. New York will always be home, but I’m very fortunate to enjoy the best of both.
 

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