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Colette Pierce Burnette

2020 Speaker
Colette Pierce Burnette

COLETTE PIERCE BURNETTE, Ed.D, is the president and chief executive officer of Huston-Tillotson University. Previously, she served as interim president at Pierce College in Puyallup, Washington; the vice president for administration and chief financial officer, executive assistant to the president, vice president for information technology and services, and chief information officer at Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio; Dean of information technology at Pierce College in Lakewood, Washington; and manager of consulting and project management services at the Washington State Department of Transportation in Olympia, Washington. Before transitioning into higher education, Burnette worked as a computer analyst at The Washington Post, an operations support engineer at Proctor and Gamble, director of information systems at Neighborhood Reinvestment Corp., and ran her own computer consulting firm, CompuMent. She received a BS in engineering from The Ohio State University, a MSA from Georgia College, is a graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s management development program and received her Ed.D. in higher education administration from University of Pennsylvania.