Claudia Schrader

President Claudia Schrader joined the Kingsborough Community in the fall of 2018. Under her leadership, Kingsborough Community College applied for the Achieving the Dream Race and Equity Leadership Academy and the AAC&U Institute on Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation. Through these initiatives, she has empowered a cross-functional team of faculty and staff to engage in a reflective process of implicit bias and to identify key areas where we can make equitable change. She has secured funding, championed, and promoted these ongoing efforts, been an integral participant in the dialogues, and created structures whereby faculty and staff feel empowered to exercise their own agency.

In previous equity and inclusion reports, Kingsborough students had expressed repeatedly that they did not feel like they were listened to or acknowledged. President Schrader listened and brought her energetic and empathetic “Welcome Wagon” into the areas of New York City that were most neglected.” She went to students where they were to let them know they were wanted, heard, and a part of our college community, perhaps the first president in the college’s history to visit these more remote, underdeveloped parts of New York City. The effort was such a success she was later joined by another City University of New York President as well as the Chancellor. Her persistence was spreading and shining the light on students who had previously been marginalized.