Chancellor

Gregory A. Smith, Chancellor

Relentless Optimism Drives Transformative Change at the San Diego Community College District 

Gregory Smith was a college student in Phoenix barely making ends meet, driving a car with no air conditioning, when he heard about a student career experience opportunity as a compliance officer with the U.S. Department of Labor. He jumped at the opportunity. 

That federal role became the foundation of a career devoted to protecting the rights of the most vulnerable. It also set him on a journey to becoming the San Diego Community College District’s seventh Chancellor in its 50-year history.  

Faced with myriad seemingly overwhelming challenges when he officially started his new role in February 2024, Smith wasn’t one to worry, saying: “Relentless optimism is my superpower.” 

That optimism, paired with focus and vision, has driven several important accomplishments early in his tenure as chancellor. Among them: 

• Living-wage breakthrough: Smith championed a districtwide living-wage of $30.58 per hour for permanent employees and $22.31 per hour for temporary workers, equal to annual full-time salaries of $63,606 and $46,404, respectively. 
• Financial resilience: The district’s general fund reserve now exceeds $94 million, nearly triple its balance three years ago, providing additional financial security as the district navigates political and economic uncertainty. 
• Enrollment growth: Student headcount at the district’s four colleges — San Diego City, Mesa, Miramar, and Continuing Education — has exceeded pre-pandemic levels reaching roughly 90,000 annually. Full-time equivalent students now total more than 39,000, up 14.7% from just five years ago, with dual enrollment rising 50%.  
• Voter-approved progress: More than 60% of voters in November, 2024, backed the SDCCD’s Measure HH, authorizing $3.5 billion in bonds to modernize workforce training facilities, replace aging infrastructure, and expand 21st-century learning spaces. 
• Historic SDSU partnership: The district recently signed an agreement with San Diego State University to create a joint-use facility at SDSU Mission Valley and while also providing a guaranteed transfer pathway for qualified SDCCD students. 
• Downtown revitalization partnership: The district is collaborating on the reimagining of the San Diego Civic Center, with plans for a downtown museum and learning hub featuring the Mesa College World Art Gallery and Research Center in a downtown museum and learning center.  
• Fundraising success: Smith recently helped secure the district’s first-ever $1 million donation and has overseen strategic investments at the district and each of the colleges to expand fundraising capacity and prepare for a $100 million campaign aimed at expanding the workforce, boosting economic mobility, and enriching the San Diego region. 

The Chancellor isn’t running any victory laps. “I'm happy with our early progress, but we have so much more to accomplish,” he said. Expanding a partnership with San Diego Unified School District and building affordable student housing at City College and the College of Continuing Education’s historic Educational Cultural Complex rank among his next priorities. Ground was broken at ECC and City College during 2025. 

As chancellor, Smith is responsible for a $2.1 billion annual budget and all operations of a system that generates $5.8 billion in regional economic impact and remains the largest provider of higher education and workforce training in San Diego County. 

It’s a long way from Trona, the small San Bernardino County town where Smith was born to working class parents who moved to the not-much-larger town of Ridgecrest when he was 11. After high school, Smith enrolled at Cerro Coso Community College. It was all he could afford.  

“My parents could not go to college, my grandparents could not go to college, so it was really important to them that I go, because their prospects were really limited,” he said. 

After leaving Cerro Coso and establishing residency in Arizona, Smith transferred to Arizona State University, where he earned a bachelor’s degrees in English literature and political science graduating summa cum laude. While there, he joined the U.S. Department of Labor as a compliance officer. There, a retired Air Force major and supervisor, Marvin Jordan, saw his potential and changed his life with blunt advice.  

“He told me that if I stayed a compliance officer, my career would amount to an incredible waste of ability,” Smith recalled. “He drove into me that when you go into public service, you have an obligation to find the highest level at which you can contribute, and then you have to reach that level.” 

That push inspired Smith’s upward trajectory. He became an assistant district director in the agency’s Chicago office, his first supervisory position. He quickly promoted to director of regional operations for the Pacific Region and later transferred to district director in the San Jose office, overseeing compliance evaluations and outreach across the Bay Area, Hawaii, and Guam. While serving as district director, he enrolled in the University of Southern California’s master’s in public administration program and began exploring new career options. He quickly decided the best professional alignment with personal values would be to continue public service in the California community colleges. When a human resources director position opened up at Shasta College, he took a calculated risk. 

“I was immediately intrigued,” Smith said. “A community college had been such an important part of my trajectory and my pathway to something that otherwise would never would have happened.” 

He joined Shasta College, in part, to lead the college’s EEO efforts — “my day job for 12 years” — and soon took on increasingly senior roles as associate vice president of Human Resources and interim vice president of Administrative Services. At Shasta, Smith helped rewrite labor contracts, modernized accommodations procedures, and opened new employment tracks for formerly incarcerated students. 

“I had this tremendous sense of fulfillment. Even the smallest things — I saw how it affected people,” he said. 

He joined the SDCCD in 2020 as vice chancellor of People, Culture, and Technology Services (formerly Human Resources). Today, he continues to navigate complex challenges including an increasingly adversarial federal stance on diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

“As we go through national debates on Hispanic-Serving and Minority-Serving Institution designations, I hope that one day we can move beyond needing separate programs, because equity should already be embedded in everything we do.” 

A hallmark of his leadership remains ambitious expectation: “I’d rather set an extremely high bar and achieve 75% of it than set a low one and complete 100%. You aim high just to see how far you can go.”