Sara Tucker
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sara Martinez Tucker is the Under Secretary of Education at the U.S. Department of Education and former president and Chief Executive Officer of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund.
In 2005, TIME Magazine named her one of the 25 most influential Hispanics in America; Town & Country ranked her among the young, new breed of philanthropists. As president and CEO of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, Sara Martinez Tucker pursues an aggressive goal: to double the rate of Hispanics earning college degrees by 2010.
Under her leadership, HSF continues to expand its ability to meet the needs of Latino students and families. Her accomplishments include growing the organization’s annual budget from $3.5 million to more than $40 million; raising a landmark $50 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc; and successfully stewarding the Hispanic portion of the $1 billion Gates Millennium Scholars Program.
In her time at the helm of HSF, Sara has generated funds for almost $135 million in scholarships to more than 39,000 students, clearly establishing HSF as the premier Hispanic higher education organization in the U.S. Recognizing that scholarships alone will not get HSF to its goal, she led the launch of community outreach programs to raise college expectations in Latino families and communities. To date, these programs have directly touched more than 65,000 students, parents, HSF alumni, and community members.
Sara is a founding board member of the National Center for Educational Accountability and the National Scholarship Providers Association. Since 2001, she has served on the seven-member North American Diversity Advisory board of Toyota Motor Corporation to raise employee awareness and provide counsel on diversity issues.
Before joining HSF in 1996, Sara spent 16 years at AT&T, becoming the first Latina to reach the company’s executive level. In her last assignment at the company, she served as a regional vice president for AT&T’s Global Business Communications Systems, where she led a $400 million division to its highest profit levels. Prior to this, Sara was vice president for Consumer Operations, a $370 million operation with 6,500 employees serving AT&T’s 80 million consumers. Under her leadership, this group contributed to the division’s receipt of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.
A native of Laredo, Texas, Sara Tucker received her undergraduate degree in journalism, graduating with honors from the University of Texas at Austin. She was a general-assignments reporter for the San Antonio Express before returning to U.T., where she received a master of business administration degree with high honors. More recently, Sara received an honorary doctorate in law from the University of Notre Dame and an honorary doctor of humane letters from Boston College. Sara and her husband, Greg, live in San Francisco, California.
Tucker was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the U.S. Under Secretary of Education in December 2006. Her primary initiative will be to carry out the recommendations of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education.
In January 2007, Tucker announced a controversial decision to allow Nelnet to keep $278 million in overpayments that Department of Education auditors had declared improper. Her ties to Nelnet through her stewardship of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund came under fire from several members of Congress as a result of this decision.[1]
