Dr. Kendrick — who has served as president of Gateway Community College since 1999 — has seen Gateway through unprecedented growth. In her first eight years, the school’s enrollment more than doubled and today Gateway is the largest of Connecticut’s 12 community colleges, serving more than 12,000 undergraduates a year.

Under her leadership, Gateway has increased program offerings and community partnerships with major industry leaders to meet the workforce development needs in nursing, allied health, green technologies, culinary arts, early childhood education and business. She has been instrumental in increasing and enhancing articulation agreements for Gateway students to seamlessly transfer to the region’s four-year colleges and universities. Gateway has been listed in The New York Times as the top community college in Connecticut for incoming freshmen. The crowning achievement of her tenure has been the college’s new LEED Gold-certified campus in downtown New Haven, which opened in 2012.

Prior to being appointed president at Gateway, Dr. Kendrick distinguished herself as the first black woman to be named associate dean and then dean of the School of Business at Milwaukee Area Technical College, where she went on to become executive vice president and the highest-ranking African-American woman in Wisconsin’s higher education system. 

A native of Jackson, Tenn., Dr. Kendrick graduated from Union University, earning a bachelor’s degree in business administration. She was one of three African-American students — the only woman — to initiate integration at the school. She holds a master’s degree in business management from Cardinal Stritch University in Wisconsin and a doctorate in higher education management from Walden University in Minnesota. She also is a graduate of the Institute for Educational Management at Harvard University.