Shawnda Navarro Floyd, JD, EdD

Provost, Dallas College
ACAO Board of Directors

Shawnda Navarro Floyd, J.D., Ed.D., is the Provost at Dallas College, one of the nation’s largest and most dynamic comprehensive higher education institutions. As its founding Chief Academic Officer, she designed the academic organizational structure for a seven-school enterprise serving more than 130,000 students annually, overseeing 1,000+ full-time and 3,800+ part-time faculty across 20 campus locations and a 500 million operating budget. A member of the Chancellor’s Executive Team, she is recognized nationally as a transformational leader whose work integrates academic excellence, student success, and equity as inseparable institutional obligations.

Dr. Navarro Floyd’s career spans higher education leadership, legal practice, and the classroom—a breadth that informs her deeply relational and outcomes-driven leadership philosophy. Prior to joining Dallas College, she served as Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs and Student Success at North Lake College, where she led a district-wide Guided Pathways initiative that increased student retention by 10% in year one and redesigned developmental education to improve student success rates from 48.81% to 64.29%. Her work has consistently centered on building institutional structures that meet students where they are—particularly students from historically underserved communities—and ensuring that equity and access are embedded in policy, practice, and campus culture.

Before entering academic administration, she served as a Deputy Attorney General for the State of New Jersey, litigating federal civil rights matters, and maintained a private civil and criminal practice. She holds a J.D. from Temple University Beasley School of Law, an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership from Rowan University, and a B.A. in English Literature from Rider University. Dr. Navarro Floyd is an Aspen Presidential Fellow, a Commissioner on the AACC Commission on Student Success, a member of the Deloitte Future of Work Advisory Board, a consultant for Complete College America, and an Achieving the Dream Leadership Coach