Dr. Cynthia K. Orellana’s career reflects her passion and commitment to inclusive and collaborative practices that bridge the opportunity divide and drive systems change.
Dr. Orellana is experienced in community organizing and advocacy, community development, voter engagement and campaigns, governance and social policy, cross-organizational partnerships, education justice, and the development of startup initiatives.
Currently, Dr. Orellana serves as the director of the office of community partnerships at the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMB), which fosters community partnerships to advance the university’s mission as Boston’s public research university. Prior to UMB, Dr. Orellana served two terms of Governor Deval L. Patrick’s administration, first as director of the Commonwealth Corps in the Office of the Governor and, later, as the assistant commissioner for access and success strategies at the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education, where she led strategic policy projects and initiatives to increase college readiness and college-going rates of the Commonwealth’s first-generation.
Dr. Orellana’s commitment to community-based initiatives that center and elevate the experiences of systemically excluded communities is demonstrated by her service on boards and national and local advisory groups that align with these values. She was recognized by the Massachusetts Black and Latino Legislative Caucus with a Latino Excellence Award in 2023; the Commonwealth Seminar’s Civic Engagement Amplifier Award in 2021; Campus Compact’s Nadinne Cruz Community Engagement Professional Award in 2020; Get Konnected’s 25 Influential Millennial Leaders of Color and Amplify Latinx’s list of 30 Amplifiers for the Latino community in Massachusetts in 2018; and is among the 100 most influential people in Massachusetts to the Latino community in El Planeta Newspaper’s 2017 Powermeter list.
Dr. Orellana is a native and current resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is the first generation of her family born in the United States, the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants, and first in her family to attend college. She holds a Ph.D. in higher education leadership from University of Massachusetts Boston, a master’s degree in urban and environmental policy and planning from Tufts University, and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Northeastern University.