Education: ANNE M. KRESS

PRESIDENT, NORTHERN VIRGINIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE, ANNANDALE

Published August 29, 2022 by Virginia Business

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.