Rob Johnstone

Rob Johnstone is Founder & President at National Center for Inquiry & Improvement. He works to help two- and four-year colleges create structures and processes that increase student completion, learning, and labor market outcomes. His unique and engaging approach to inquiry and improvement fuses the world of foundations, initiatives, and system-level policy changes with the ground-level work of college practitioners and college senior leaders.

Johnstone has worked on the ground with more than 350 colleges around the country both directly and on initiatives such as the American Association of Community Colleges Pathways Institutes, the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence, the California Guided Pathways Initiative, NCII’s A2I2 Cohort Model, Jobs for the Future’s work with the statewide centers in the national Student Success Center Network, Gates’ Completion by Design, Lumina’s Beyond Financial Aid, and a variety of state-level and local college projects.

He has served as a director, dean, and provost in the California community college system for more than a decade, and he worked as a strategic consultant in industry prior to shifting to higher education. With more than 25 years of consulting experience in the industry and higher education, he has a unique dual perspective on this work. Most importantly, he brings an energy and passion to improving lives and communities through a social justice and equity lens.