Bennett, Lori
Dr. Lori Bennett was born in Idaho and raised in Oregon and California. After graduating from college, she began her career in marketing, working for banking and consumer products companies, including a Fortune 500 company. Dr. Bennett began her career in education in 1992, as a part-time
faculty member at Tacoma Community College and Highline Community College in Washington. In California, she served as a tenured faculty member, Department Chair, Dean, and Executive Vice President of Instruction and Student Services at Moorpark College, and then as President of Clovis Community College for six years. She now serves as an educational consultant.
Dr. Bennett has a wide variety of experience, including strategic planning, educational master planning, facilities planning, accreditation, enrollment management, new program and curriculum development, guided pathways, program planning and review, integrated budget planning and resource allocation, organizational development, institutional research and data analysis, student learning outcomes, and inclusive hiring practices. She is a proud advocate for student equity and success. Dr. Bennett has served on a variety of state and local boards and consortiums, including the Board of Trustees for Community Health System, Board of Directors for the Clovis Chamber of Commerce, the Fresno K-16 Collaborative Executive Steering Committee and the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium. She was an active participant in the Fresno County DRIVE Initiative for Economic Development, VP of the Chief Executive Officers of California Community Colleges, & Co-Chair of the CEO Strategic Leadership Program. Over the last two decades, she has led/ served on several ACCJC accreditation and California CC Institutional Effectiveness Partnership Initiative (IEPI) peer review teams.
Dr. Bennett is an innovative, collegial, transparent, and collaborative leader. She is a program builder with a focus on student completion. Under her leadership, Clovis Community College student enrollment grew more than 40% over six years and was named a Champion of Higher Education for its exemplary work in awarding associate degrees for transfer. She focused college resources on innovative, targeted outreach and retention activities that had a direct positive impact on student equity and success. She developed a college-wide vision for new transfer and career technical education program development designed to meet the needs of local employers and led the development of a new 60K sq ft Applied Technology building.