27: The Honor Role Episode 27: Sue Borrego

Tech & Learning’s Honor Role

Former Chancellor Borrego shares, “I am proof that educators taking an interest in and believing in your potential can motivate you to do whatever you set your mind to do.” Over the course of her 30-year career as an innovative leader in higher education, Dr. Susan E. Borrego has remained above all else a passionate advocate for students and the individual’s ability to enact positive change. Born in Detroit, Sue grew up downriver from the city in a working-class family of auto and steel workers, bar tenders, and grocery store clerks. Sue became an emancipated minor at age 16. No one in Sue’s family had attended college, and she assumed that high school would be the end of her educational journey as well. Now, Dr. Borrego harnesses this lived experience and passion for making a difference in her work with institutions of higher learning. She helps university and college leadership integrate and align student advocacy with their institutional mission, vision, and vitality. Sue conducts and shares ongoing research into improving student learning and success, building organizational capacity, serving diverse and under-represented students, and addressing class issues to ensure greater educational equality. She helps individuals and organizations alike understand and tap into their own power to transform the lives of employees, customers, and entire communities, through innovative, bold leadership that opens rather than shuts doors.