2024 Great Ideas Summit Keynote Speaker: Cecilia Orphan

Cecilia Orphan is a working-class, first-generation college graduate who received maximum Pell grants to attend college. As a child, she experienced homelessness and was a welfare recipient. She is personally familiar with the transformative nature of need-based financial aid and colleges designed to expand access and foster student-centered, humanizing learning experiences after attending Linn Benton Community College, a Rural-Serving Institution (RSI), and Portland State University, a Regional Public University (RPU). Simply put, attending these colleges changed her life. She has devoted her career to expanding her understanding of and appreciation for RPUs and RSIs so that other students might enjoy the same opportunities she had, and so that higher education’s contributions to democracy are strengthened.

She has worked to bring broader exposure and understanding to RPUs and RSIs and improve research, funding, policy, and media coverage of these sectors so that they might foster transformational educational experiences for students. Part of this work has entailed being in the news. She has been a guest on NPR’s Code Switch podcast and has been quoted by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Politico, InsideHigherEd, Open Campus, Newsy, CBS 42, Chalkbeat Colorado, and other news sources. She has been honored with awards that recognize her efforts to leverage research and teaching to promote human-centered learning experiences and upward mobility for first-generation college students like herself.

From 2006-2011, Cecilia directed the American Democracy Project, a national civic engagement initiative of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. Cecilia holds a Ph.D. in Higher Education from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Portland State University.