Aidé Acosta

Aidé Acosta, Ph.D., is Chief College Officer (CCO) for the Noble Network of Charter Schools. As CCO, Dr. Acosta is responsible for advancing Noble’s mission: to support all Noble graduates to succeed on the path of their choice, leading to 75% of alumni earning bachelor’s degrees. She leads all college access and success strategies, and oversees the following programs: Summer of a Lifetime, College Counseling, Alumni Supports, Alumni Career Office, Pritzker Access Scholarship (PAS), and Noble Forward. Dr. Acosta also serves as a leader in the national education community, collaborating with a national network of practitioners and sharing Noble’s practices toward improving college outcomes for underserved populations. Dr. Acosta has been at Noble since 2013 and has worked at Golder College Prep (2013-2014) and UIC College Prep (2014-2015). She joined the Noble Support Team in 2015 to launch the Pritzker Access Scholarship (PAS) program to support undocumented students. Given the unprecedented outcomes of the PAS program (with a 70% bachelor’s completion for undocumented students), she was tasked in 2017 with leading the organizational strategy to improving college outcomes for all Noble graduates. She was named Chief College Officer in December 2019.

Dr. Acosta grew up in the border region of San Diego/Tijuana. Her parents arrived in the U.S. with a collective formal education of eight years. She is a first-generation college student who, despite dropping out of high school in 10th grade, has earned a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and a doctorate. Dr. Acosta has over 15 years of experience working on improving educational outcomes for students of color, and leverages her experience, empathy, and unwavering belief in every student’s ability toward improving the educational outcomes for underserved students. She earned her B.A. in history and anthropology from the University of California, Riverside, and a master’s and doctorate from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Acosta has taught at Northwestern University, Indiana University Bloomington and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.