Shirley M. Collado, Ph.D.

Shirley M. Collado, Ph.D., is President & Chief Executive Officer of College Track, the most comprehensive college completion program in the country dedicated to democratizing potential among first-generation college students from underserved communities.

Throughout her career, Dr. Collado has leveraged her leadership to advocate for equity in all forms, pushing toward real change by activating an awareness of—and working toward the deconstruction of—existing structures that prevent full participation, whether on campuses or in communities at large.

Prior to her leadership at College Track, Dr. Collado served as the ninth president of Ithaca College and, at the conclusion of her tenure, was named President Emerita of the institution. She was the first person of color to be named president at Ithaca College, and the first Dominican-American in the U.S. to serve as president of a four-year institution.

She is known nationally for designing and implementing innovative approaches in higher education that expand student access and success, and has extensive experience overseeing complex not-for-profit organizations in both the private and public sectors of higher education.

A skillful and dynamic leader, Dr. Collado has previously served as executive vice chancellor and chief operating officer at Rutgers University-Newark; dean of the college and vice president for student affairs at Middlebury; and as the executive vice president of The Posse Foundation, where she scaled its operations nationally.

Dr. Collado is the Brooklyn-born daughter of Dominican immigrants, and a first-generation college graduate. She is a member of Posse’s inaugural class of students, the first Posse scholar to receive a doctoral degree, and the first to become a trustee of a higher education institution through her decade of service on the Board of Trust at Vanderbilt University, her alma mater. She was named Trustee Emerita upon the conclusion of her tenure with this board.

Among her commitments to serving her communities, Dr. Collado is a board member of ACT, Excelencia in Education, Kids First Chicago, National Association for College Admission Counseling, StarRez,  and is a founding member of Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. Dr. Collado serves as a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and co-chairs the Carnegie Commission on Post-secondary Education. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences’ Commission on Opportunities After High School, an advisor for The Flight School, and serves as honorary chairwoman of the Mariposa Foundation.

She earned her bachelor’s degree at Vanderbilt and her master’s and doctoral degrees in clinical psychology at Duke University. Dr. Collado resides in Oakland with her husband, A. Van Jordan, an award-winning poet, and their dogs Frida and Melba.

Follow Dr. Collado on LinkedIn.