Alex Rodriguez was recently named Northern Essex Community College’s new director of Corporate and Community Education.
Rodriguez joined the college in September and is responsible for leading and driving education and training programs for corporate and community audiences.
“Alex has the perfect combination of skills and experience,” says Allison Dolan-Wilson, Northern Essex’s vice president of institutional advancement. “He understands the academic environment and has worked very successfully with business and nonprofit partners to build workforce development training programs with results.”
A Texas native, Rodriguez, of Melrose, has been teaching strategy and marketing at local colleges, including Lesley University, UMass Boston, and Newbury College for the past seven years.
He previously worked for the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, a Boston economic development organization founded by Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter that focuses on driving economic growth within distressed urban communities. Rodriguez ran the Inner City 100, the organization’s flagship program that recognizes the 100 fastest-growing inner city firms in the United States and provides them with the necessary management education resources to help their CEOs continue to grow their firms.
He also worked in various marketing and business development roles for software companies.
Rodriguez says he is looking forward to bringing together his nonprofit, academic and private sector experience in this new role. His first step will be to work closely with employers and community leaders to assess the college’s current programs and make sure they’re meeting community needs.
“The goal is to leverage the college’s and local community’s natural assets to assist in creating truly equitable upward economic mobility for more local residents,” he says.
Rodriguez has a bachelor’s in political science and an MBA from Texas Christian University and is a candidate for a doctorate in Business Administration specializing in higher education marketing and strategy at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. The son of an immigrant from Juarez, Mexico, Rodriguez says he “is a product of the Houston oil patch” as his grandfather worked in a Shell Oil refinery, and both his parents practiced law in the energy sector. Rodriguez moved to New England 12 years ago with his wife, Katie, a New Hampshire native. The couple has two children.