Another Government Lawyer Selected for a Campus Presidency

On Thursday, November 17, 2022 New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas was appointed as the next president of Northern New Mexico College. This continues the trend of not just lawyers being appointed to the campus C-suite but it also continues to reinforce the unique set of skills that government lawyers bring to the job.

Balderas will assume the campus leadership role when his second term as Attorney General ends on December 31, 2022. A graduate of the University of New Mexico School of Law, Balderas has had a distinguished career in public service that includes two terms as the New Mexico State Auditor, more than two years in the New Mexico House of Representatives and service as an Assistant District Attorney for Bernalillo County.

According to the news account, the campus community is extremely happy with the news of the selection and pending final negotiations the Board will formally approve the contract and confirm the Attorney General’s new role.

There are many skills that government lawyers bring to the table as detailed in the article linked above and discussed in Chapter 4 of May it Please the Campus: Lawyers Leading Higher Education.

Balderas’s official appointment will make him the first lawyer president appointed in 2023, and the 65th distinct lawyer president appointed (71 in total as a number had more than one appointment) in the 2020s.

Lawyers Leading Higher Education Blog Welcome

Welcome to the Lawyers Leading Higher Education blog. This blog has been launched with the release of the new book, May it Please the Campus: Lawyers Leading Higher Education, and it is designed to share information about higher education leadership and the role of lawyers in this space. Up until now, the appointment of lawyers as college and university presidents has been widely underreported and understudied. With the data that is now available on the Lawyers Leading Higher Education website, the public, search committees, the media, the legal profession, and others will have access to information to inform discussions and decision making on this topic. There is much here for students of leadership as well as for lawyers who are considering careers in higher education. The website where this blog is hosted contains a Resources tab with relevant articles and discussions; a Trends tab that graphically illustrates data that has been collected to date; a Meet the Presidents tab that lists by century, the names of lawyer presidents leading institutions of higher education. I welcome suggestions from readers of people who should be added to these charts. Please email me at patricia.salkin@touro.edu.

Check back here and consider subscribing to this blog for more information about lawyers leading higher education.