Kathleen deLaski is the founder and board chair of the Education Design Lab, which works with colleges, states, and employers to design shorter, more targeted forms of higher education. The Lab has pioneered the "micro-pathway" model with community colleges and leads work across the ecosystem to help employers look beyond college degrees to validate skills. Kathleen serves as a senior advisor for Harvard's Project on the Workforce and teaches higher ed redesign at George Mason University. She serves on several boards, including Credential Engine and the advisory board of the Taubman Center for Cities and States at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She also manages the deLaski Family Foundation, a national grant-maker in education reform and education mobility. Kathleen has been named to Washingtonian Magazine’s list of top policy influencers each year from 2022 to 2025.

Earlier in her career, as an executive at Fortune 500 company Sallie Mae, Kathleen founded their award-winning corporate foundation. She was a television correspondent for ABC News, covering the White House and foreign affairs, a consumer product developer in the early days of AOL, and, in the Clinton administration, the first woman to serve as chief Pentagon spokesperson.

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Brian Rosenberg is currently visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. From 2003 until 2020, he served as the 16th President of Macalester College. He is the author of Whatever It Is, I'm Against It: Resistance to Change in Higher Education, published in 2023 by Harvard Education Press. His articles on higher education appear regularly in The Chronicle of Higher Education and have also appeared in publications including The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. He serves as senior advisor and director at the African Leadership University and as a member of the board of the Teagle Foundation. Rosenberg received his B.A. from Cornell University and his Ph.D. in English from Columbia University. Prior to arriving at Macalester, he served as dean of the faculty at Lawrence University and as professor and chair of the English Department at Allegheny College. He is the author of two books and many articles on Victorian literature.

Lynn Pasquerella was appointed president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities in 2016, after serving as the eighteenth president of Mount Holyoke College. She has held positions as Provost at the University of Hartford and Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Rhode Island, where she taught for more than two decades. A philosopher whose work has combined teaching and scholarship with local and global engagement, Pasquerella has written extensively on medical ethics, metaphysics, public policy, and the philosophy of law. Her most recent book, What We Value: Public Health, Social Justice, and Educating for Democracy, examines the role of higher education in addressing some of the most pressing contemporary issues at the intersection of ethics, law, and public policy. Pasquerella is immediate past president of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and the host of Northeast Public Radio’s The Academic Minute.

She is a graduate of Quinebaug Valley Community College, Mount Holyoke College, and Brown University. Her awards and honors include receiving the President’s Award and Judith Krug Medal from Phi Beta Kappa; the William Rogers Award and the Horace Mann Medal from Brown University; the STAR Scholars Network North Star Lifetime Achievement Award; Mary Baldwin University’s Algernon Sydney Sullivan Service to Humanity Award; the Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences Advocacy Award; Quinebaug Valley Community College Champions Award; and the Mount Holyoke Alumni Association’s Elizabeth Topham Kennan Award. Pasquerella holds honorary degrees from Elizabethtown College, Bishop’s University, the University of South Florida, the University of Hartford, the University of Rhode Island, Concordia College, Mount Holyoke College, Bay Path University, and St. Mary’s College and was named by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education as one of America’s top 35 women leaders. She serves on the boards of the Lingnan Foundation, the National Trust for the Humanities, the Coalition for the Common Good, and Handshake.

Waded Cruzado is president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), a membership organization that fosters a community of university leaders collectively working to advance the mission of public research universities in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

The association’s membership consists of more than 250 public research universities, land-grant institutions, state university systems, and affiliated organizations focused on increasing student success and workforce readiness; promoting pathbreaking scientific research; and bolstering economic and community engagement. Drawing on the powerful collective action of its members, the association’s advocacy arm helps shape federal policy that maximizes the positive impact of public and land-grant universities. APLU’s members span all 50 states, the District of Columbia, six U.S. territories, Canada, and Mexico.

From 2010 to 2025, Cruzado served as President of Montana State University, where she led transformative growth and set records in enrollment, retention, academic excellence, research, and fundraising. Cruzado is well known for her passion in bringing greater public understanding to the importance of the Morrill Acts of 1862, 1890, and 1994 – which collectively created the public, land-grant university system for the benefit of all Americans. She is a passionate champion of the land-grant university’s tripartite mission of education, research, and outreach to communities, as well as the crucial role higher education plays in the development of individuals, the prosperity of the nation, and the vitality of democracy.

Under Cruzado’s leadership, Montana State University achieved major growth milestones in a wide array of areas. Student full-time-equivalent enrollment grew 35% and the university’s student retention rate set a record while simultaneously seeing the highest ACT/SAT and GPA scores. The university’s four-year graduation rate soared 61% during Cruzado’s tenure. Research at Montana State University, another of the institution’s pillars, flourished during Cruzado’s time as president with the university’s annual research expenditures growing more than 162%.

Prior to assuming the presidency of Montana State University, Cruzado was Executive Vice President and Provost at New Mexico State University (NMSU) and served as interim president of the university. She also previously served as Dean of the College of Arts and Science at NMSU and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, where she started her career.

Cruzado has held a number of leadership roles in the higher education community, in addition previously serving as Chair of the APLU Board of Directors in 2021, including: Chair of the Campus Compact Board; Chair of the TIAA Hispanic Advisory Board; a member of the American Council of Education Board of Directors; and as a member of the Board for International Food and Agricultural Development, a role appointed by the President of the United States.

Cruzado has earned a wide variety of professional honors, including being recognized with the APLU Seaman Knapp Memorial Lectureship, the Council of Fellows Mentor Award by the American Council on Education, the Paul Harris Fellow Recognition, the Hero Award from the Montana Chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and the Michael P. Malone Educator of the Year award.  A Puerto Rico native, Cruzado received her bachelor’s degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, her master’s degree in Spanish from The University of Texas at Arlington, and her Ph.D. in Humanities also from The University of Texas at Arlington.