Thinking & Advocacy
On July 1, Lenore Rodicio, Ph.D., officially began her tenure as president and CEO of Achieving the Dream. Many across the ATD Network already know her as a coach, partner, and longtime champion of community colleges. Throughout her career — across roles in teaching, college leadership, and national higher education work — she has helped institutions use evidence, collaboration, and innovation to improve student success. As she begins this new chapter, we asked her to reflect on the experiences that shaped her leadership, the opportunities she sees for community colleges, and how she hopes to build on the strengths of the ATD Network.
1. Your journey to this role has included experiences as a faculty member and college administrator. Looking back, what experiences have most shaped your approach to leadership?
All of them have shaped how I lead.
My time in the classroom grounded me in what sits at the center of this work: students. That’s where community colleges have their greatest impact, and it’s a constant reminder that every decision we make should strengthen students’ ability to learn, persist, and succeed.
My work redesigning advising and student supports taught me how important it is for colleges to create clear pathways for students. When institutions are thoughtful about how they organize support and connect students to resources, students can spend more time focused on learning and reaching their goals.
As a college leader, I learned the challenge, and responsibility, of making hard decisions about where to invest limited resources to have the greatest impact. Those decisions can’t be made on anecdote alone. They have to be grounded in data, informed by outcomes, and tied to a clear understanding of what is working and where we need to improve. I also learned that colleges do not do this work alone. They are part of a larger community, and student success is closely tied to how well we work alongside schools, workforce partners, service providers, civic leaders, and policymakers at the local and state levels.
That experience also taught me that institutional change takes time. It takes persistence, a willingness to adjust course, and a commitment to using evidence to guide improvement along the way.
2. You’ve also worked as a coach and national thought leader with colleges and organizations across the country. What has that broader perspective taught you?
As a coach, I’ve had the opportunity to bring those experiences to other colleges and serve as a thought partner to leaders, faculty, and staff. That work has reinforced for me that there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. There are strong practices, but they have to fit the college and the community it serves.
And through my work with national partners and philanthropy, I’ve built relationships with organizations across the field that care deeply about the future of community colleges. That has reminded me that the work ahead is bigger than any one institution or organization. We move the field forward when we learn from one another, build on each other’s strengths, and stay connected in our shared commitment to students and communities.
That’s the approach I bring to this role: grounded in practice, guided by evidence, shaped by partnership, and focused on long-term change.
3. Outside of your professional life, what experiences, values, or influences have most shaped who you are as a leader today?
My family, without question.
I’m the daughter of Cuban immigrants and the first in my family born in the United States. My parents, and especially my grandparents, were unwavering about the importance of education. It was never framed as an option. It was simply expected.
I don’t think they, or even I, fully understood all the doors education could open, but I always knew college was part of my future. My family made sacrifices so I could focus on school without carrying the weight of everything else.
I still remember my mom driving me during my last two summers of high school to dual enrollment classes at Miami Dade College. Later, I earned a scholarship to Barry University, and my dad drove me to my first advising appointment there.
While we were there, he learned about opportunities to earn credit for prior learning and complete his own degree. So, we enrolled together. And we graduated together. I always joke that I was the first in my family to graduate from college — but only by a few minutes!
That experience shaped me in a profound way. It made education personal. I saw firsthand how it could transform not just one life but an entire family.
That’s something my husband and I have worked to instill in our own five children. Two have already earned master’s degrees, one of whom is now pursuing her Ph.D. Another has completed her bachelor’s degree and hopes to go to veterinary school. Another is entering her third year studying accounting. And then there’s our youngest, who is 12 and still deciding between being an animal scientist or an artist, depending on the day. But one thing she already knows is that college is in her future!
At the core of it all is the same belief my family gave me: education creates opportunity, and opportunity changes lives. That belief continues to shape how I lead every day.
4. You often speak about the transformative power of community colleges. What first drew you to this sector, and what continues to inspire your commitment to it today?
I landed in community colleges by accident.
I’m a chemist by training, and I started my career teaching chemistry as an adjunct. At the time, I took the role because it gave me the flexibility to spend more time at home with my newborn, the second of our children. But it didn’t take long for me to fall in love with the mission of community colleges.
Watching students learn in real time was more rewarding than I ever expected. When the opportunity to become a full-time faculty member opened up, I didn’t hesitate to pursue it.
I still remember one of my first office-hour visits. A student who had recently completed her English as a Second Language courses came to see me. She was in my general chemistry class, and I assumed she wanted help with a difficult concept. Instead, she asked me to help her make sure she was understanding the homework questions correctly so she could work through them on her own.
She came every week. She worked hard. And she aced the class.
About eight years later, I received a letter from her at my office. She thanked me for the time I had spent with her and included a photo of herself in her master’s regalia. She had just completed her master’s degree in forensic chemistry.
I still have that photo.
That moment has stayed with me because it captures what community colleges do every day. They open doors, create opportunity, and change the trajectory of people’s lives. Over the years, I’ve had so many experiences like that, and they continue to remind me why this work matters.
That’s what drew me in, and it’s what continues to inspire me today.
5. Community colleges are navigating a rapidly changing landscape, from demographic shifts and workforce demands to questions about the value of higher education. Where do you see the greatest opportunities for colleges to make a difference in the years ahead?
It will always be a changing landscape because our colleges are not static. They are more than buildings or campuses. They sit at the center of their communities, and that means they have to stay closely connected to the needs, challenges, and opportunities in those communities.
That’s why I don’t think questions about the value of higher education are something we should resist. We should be ready to answer them.
And answering them means being honest with ourselves. Are we serving students as well as we can? Are we helping them complete credentials that lead to real opportunity? Are we aligned with what our communities actually need, not just what we think they need?
I think the greatest opportunity ahead is for community colleges to be even more intentional about that alignment. Not just preparing students for jobs but helping build stronger local economies, healthier communities, and greater opportunity for the people they serve.
For too long, we’ve measured success mostly at the level of the student or the institution. Those measures matter, but they are not enough. We also have to ask: What is changing in the community because this college is here? Are wages rising? Are families more stable? Are employers finding the talent they need? Are more people participating in the civic and economic life of their communities?
If we can answer those questions well, we won’t have to defend the value of higher education. Our communities will tell that story for us.
ATD’s Community Vibrancy Framework gives colleges a way to connect student success to broader community outcomes. It’s not about adding one more initiative. It’s about helping colleges organize their work in a way that is more connected, more intentional, and more grounded in both data and lived experience.
That’s where I see the greatest opportunity, and the greatest responsibility, in the years ahead.
6. Having worked with Achieving the Dream in many different capacities over the years, what excites you most about leading the organization at this moment, and how do you hope to build on the strengths of the ATD Network?
For starters, it is exciting to become a leader in a space where there is already so much strong work happening across Achieving the Dream and our Network.
Because of the support of our philanthropic partners and the commitment of our colleges, ATD is engaged in important work across a range of areas, from dual enrollment and workforce pathways to teaching and learning, student supports, data systems, and the growing impact of AI on higher education. That breadth matters because it keeps us connected to the real challenges colleges are facing every day.
What excites me even more is what comes next.
I see an opportunity for ATD to become even more nimble in how we turn what we’re learning into practical tools, insights, and support for the field. Colleges are navigating change in real time, and they need partners who can move with them.
That’s where I see us building on one of ATD’s greatest strengths: coaching.
I believe our coaching model can go deeper and become more dynamic, meeting colleges where they are in their transformation journey, whether they are just entering the Network or are long-standing Leader Colleges of Distinction. We’re already moving in that direction with a reimagined Foundations of Transformation experience that starts at the college, in the context of the community it serves, and helps ground the work from day one.
I’m also excited about how we strengthen the way we measure impact. Our next-generation community vibrancy metrics will help us show not only how institutions are improving, but how that improvement is showing up in the lives of students and in the health of the communities they serve.
That’s the opportunity in front of us: to build on ATD’s strong foundation, deepen our partnerships with colleges, and continue evolving in ways that help the field respond to what comes next.