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Director of Leadership Initiatives

Bernadine Chuck Fong

SIHER Biographical Information (2024) - Bernadine Chuck Fong

Bernadine Chuck Fong’s leadership experience began as president of the faculty senate for Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, leading to her co-founding the faculty union. After seven years as a faculty member, she became the first professional development officer for the college and then the first dean of Foothill’s Palo Alto campus which was the beginning of her administrative career.

She has served at the executive level as the chief administrative/finance officer, the chief academic officer, and also the chief student affairs officer. Ultimately, she became president of the college for 12 years. Under her leadership, Foothill was one of the first campuses in the country to offer online credit courses via the Internet in 1995. Foothill was also consistently ranked number one among all of California's community colleges.

After 15 years in retirement, she resumed the presidency when the college was undergoing a presidential leadership crisis. She was called upon to re-establish faculty/staff/student relations with the administration and recreate a functional shared governance system to move the college forward.

Dr. Fong has also served as executive leadership coach for college presidents for Achieving the Dream, a national organization of more than 300 colleges committed to institutional transformation focusing on underachieving students, particularly low-income students and students of color.

In addition, Dr. Fong has directed Stanford’s Preparing Future Professors shadowing program for PhD students and postdoctoral scholars for Stanford’s Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education. Previously she was also Director of Leadership Initiatives for the same office.

She has also served as the Senior Managing Partner for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. At the Foundation, she established a major national initiative designed to increase the success rates of community college developmental math students, particularly women and students of color, reaching and completing college level mathematics.

Dr. Fong has served on the Board of Trustees of Stanford University and was vice-chair of the University’s Board of Trustees Minority Alumni Relations Task Force. She currently chairs the Minority Emeriti Trustees. She has also served on a number of educational and technology boards. She is a fellow of the American Council on Education and the American Leadership Forum of Silicon Valley. She is also the recipient of the Stanford Medal for Distinguished Service to Stanford.

Dr. Fong was born and raised in Palo Alto and received her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from Stanford University. Her research interests center on organizational development and the role of senior leaders in creating a bona fide academic community with particular emphasis on mission and core values.