Education: ANNE M. KRESS

As Northern Virginia Community College’s president, Kress is also the boss of first lady Jill Biden, who teaches English at NOVA’s Alexandria campus. Although Biden now has a Secret Service detail, she has taught at NOVA since 2009.

Kress is a relative newcomer to the state’s largest community college, having arrived in January 2020 to lead NOVA, which had nearly 50,000 students enrolled as of December 2021.

Her 30-year career has included stops at community colleges in Florida and New York; she spent more than a decade as president of Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York. 

Kress was instrumental in former Gov. Ralph Northam’s G3 workforce development initiative, and she co-chaired a state task force to set strategic goals to increase equity in the community college system. With a new governor in office and the Virginia Community College System seeking a new chancellor, plans for the system are likely to shift.   

Kress also helped launch the Task Force on Higher Education and Opportunity, a national consortium of university presidents, and testified before a congressional subcommittee last year about how community colleges can help fix the labor shortage.