01:06
Eloy Ortiz Oakley Highlight
My hope is that we can eliminate the need for luck for students [to succeed]...it shouldn’t be about luck, it should be about changing the odds.
About Eloy
- Grew up in Southern California in a working class family where college was not heavily emphasized—would later become the first in his family to go to college.
- Says he always had a passion to help people and wanted to make a difference, but had no idea how to channel that into a career.
- Right out of high school, he got recruited to go to Pitzer College in Claremont, CA, but never went to class because he didn’t have a way to commute from where he lived 45 minutes away.
- Decided to join the military and ended up serving four years in the U.S. Army—credits this with helping him realize the value of an education.
- After the Army, he went to community college, then earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in environmental design and a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of California, Irvine.
- Says he missed out on the “typical college experience” because he was older, working full-time, and raising a family.
- Has been part of several trailblazing policy efforts in business and education, but is best known for his role in creating the nationally recognized Long Beach College Promise initiative.
- He is the first Latino chancellor of the California Community Colleges system, overseeing 114 community colleges in the state of California and serving 2.1 million students.
