Beatriz Rendón is currently Vice President of Strategic Initiatives for the Office of Educational Outreach and Student Services at Arizona State University (ASU). In this role she is focused on resource acquisition to support the Educational Outreach and Student Services portfolio, inclusive of access and outreach initiatives and student support service objectives. Resource acquisition efforts are pursued through the channels of philanthropy, venture capital and strategic partnerships. Prior to that, Beatriz spent 9 years as the Chief Executive Officer of ASU Preparatory Academy charter schools (ASU Prep) and Vice President of Educational Outreach. Working in a number of education leadership capacities, Beatriz has advanced transformational strategies that help increase educational outcomes for students from any background and increase the college-going pipeline. She started working in education while she was working on her Masters in Public Policy at the University of Chicago. This began a career that now spans over two decades later. In her roles at ASU, she has worked with teams to grow, cultivate and develop a continuum of education that integrates PreK-12 with university courses to serve students from diverse ethnic, socio-economic, and geographic communities through full-immersion, blended and digitally-enabled modalities. When she joined ASU in the summer of 2010, ASU Prep had two full-immersion schools serving approximately 550 students in grades K-8, with one of them being an underperforming school inherited by ASU from a local urban school district. During her final year working for ASU Prep, it served more than 7,000 students in grades PreK-12, across 12 schools, including ASU Prep Digital, its virtual campus which has a national and international reach. On average, ASU Prep realized 100% high school graduation rate and 100% post-secondary pursuit rate. She was also able to secure $12 million in philanthropic and competitive state and federal grants to support ASU Prep’s innovation and expansion agenda. As the former Executive Director of Strategic Alliances for the Critical Path Institute, Beatriz provided leadership and philanthropic development support to scientific researchers working on pre-competitive biomarkers for important diseases. Beatriz also served as the Chief Business Officer for the Tucson Unified School District, the second largest district in Arizona, where she managed an operating budget of $360 million and helped resolve multi-million, dollar deficits. From 1995-2007 Beatriz worked in several executive capacities at the Chicago Public Schools, the third largest school district in the country. After graduating with her Juris Doctorate from Loyola University of Chicago Law School, she was asked to join the leadership team advancing “Renaissance 2010,” an initiative that launched in 2005 with the goal of opening 100 new, independently operated schools by 2010. By 2007, prior to moving back to the southwest, 83 schools had been opened under Renaissance 2010. Beatriz was appointed Commissioner for the President’s Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans and is also a fall 2015 Fellow of the Pahara Aspen Education Fellowship program. Born and raised in El Paso, Texas, Beatriz is a first-generation college student, graduating from the University of Arizona, and second-generation Mexican American. Beatriz is fluent in Spanish, and an accomplished saxophonist. She and her husband have five children from high school freshman to recent college graduate along with their fur pet, Tango!