Twenty years of proven executive-leadership and management experience. Fourteen years as a community college president successfully reporting directly to a Board. Built a reputation for developing strategic, financial, management, and equity plans that yield results. Broad experience with the biotechnology, healthcare, advanced manufacturing, automotive, and high technology industries. Substantial experience with Board dynamics and governance. Demonstrated experience serving on national and regional boards. Executive experience working in extraordinarily complex and regulated environments with federal and state agencies.

While Dr. Roberts has extensive professional and academic experience, her love of and commitment to education and public service started as a child. Her father, LeRoy Roberts Jr., who from his childhood roots in a segregated Georgia and one of eight children, became a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army Air Force and a member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen. Her mother grew up in South Carolina, graduated from the historically Black college Benedict—where she taught first-year English at the age of 15, even before receiving her baccalaureate degree at 18.

Dr. Roberts forged her own educational path starting with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Seattle University, a Master of Arts in Student Personnel Administration in Higher Education from The Ohio State University and a Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership from Seattle University.

Fond of citing inspirational quotes, Dr. Roberts often refers to Marcel Proust: “The voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” Under her leadership, she has helped the colleges she served have ‘new eyes’ helping students finish what they start.