I am a higher-education leader with over a decade of progressive professional experience in enrollment management, graduate and
undergraduate admission, recruitment, outreach, and student affairs. Experienced in managing campus recruitment and conversion efforts, programming, faculty, and student engagement/advising, and building campus wide partnerships to support enrollment initiatives. Highly versed in academic and personal counseling, and the strategic recruitment and retention of diverse populations.

A native of the working-class community of Boyle Heights in Los Angeles, Fernando Peña is a first-generation scholar trained in Chicana/o Studies and Higher Education Administration and Policy. His research examines educational access, opportunity, and the ways Communities of Color have used cultural knowledge and networks in pursuit of educational equity.

He has held directorships at the University ofSouthern California, UCLA, the Claremont Colleges, and most recently at San Francisco State University where he served as Director and Chief Admissions Officer and bridged campus recruitment and retention efforts into impactful long-term strategies for the successful enrollment and retention of students. He currently supports undergraduate and graduate admission evaluation at Cal State LA and is an Associate Consultant for Ruffalo Noel Levitz, the country’s leading consultancy for enrollment, student success, and fundraising in the higher education and nonprofit communities.

Mr. Peña earned a master’s degree in Postsecondary Administration and Student Affairs from the University of Southern California, and a bachelor’s degree in Chicana and Chicano Studies with a minor in Education and Applied Psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. When not teaching, working, or traveling Mr. Peña is dog-dad to a three-year old, pintsize dictator of a French Bulldog, Benito.