Complete College America’s board of directors announced today that Tom Sugar has been named president of the organization. Sugar takes the helm of the national nonprofit after serving as senior vice president, a role he’s held since the organization’s founding in 2009.
As senior vice president, Sugar served as the chief strategist and senior advisor for the organization, overseeing activities in a number of states and leading work around the country on guided pathways. Sugar has also led efforts to grow the organization’s Alliance and doubled the size of the Annual Convening, a national event that now brings together more than 600 higher education and policy leaders in furtherance of the college completion agenda.
Additionally, Sugar has served as Complete College America’s chief communications officer, leading advocacy efforts and managing the development and publication of multiple, nationally-recognized college completion reports, including Time is the Enemy, Remediation: Higher Education’s Bridge to Nowhere, The Game Changers, Four-Year Myth and Corequisite Remediation: Spanning the Completion Divide.
Prior to joining Complete College America, Sugar served for 25 years in government and public policy, including assignments as director of communications and planning for a governor and as chief of staff to members of both the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate.
“Complete College America has a singular purpose: to enable our states to improve the rate of completion of a quality college degree or career certificate. Tom Sugar definitely gets that. Tom has worked alongside Stan Jones from the founding of Complete College America in 2009 through today, enabling substantial improvements in each of our partner states,” said CCA Board Chairman and former Wyoming Governor Jim Geringer. “Tom is passionate about improving student success. He knows that our funding partners and our CCA staff are motivated by demonstrated results. Likewise, our partner states look to CCA to show what works and to lead on how to make it happen. Our CCA Board is fully confident in Tom’s ability to carry on Stan Jones’ original work and in Tom’s knack for innovation and improvement. Tom’s leadership of the extraordinarily talented team at CCA will ensure that our states and our nation benefit from improved college completion rates and the closing of achievement gaps for our nation’s students.”
“It has been the greatest professional honor of my life to work alongside Stan Jones to raise awareness of America’s college completion challenge,” said Sugar. “When we started Complete College America nearly eight years ago, access and enrollment were the principal topics in campus leadership offices. Not so today: the 43 states, regions and metro areas that constitute our Alliance are urgently moving forward new policies and practices that maintain access while significantly boosting student success – for the benefit of all students, especially those too often left behind. But this is no time to rest on our laurels. Complete College America’s most important work still lies ahead, and I am humbled to lead our talented team onward, expecting more of ourselves and our Alliance partners to rapidly deliver results for our country’s students – and by extension all Americans. Now more than ever, we’re all in this together.”
