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Moments after Joseph Cordero ’90, MA ’93, stepped off a Greyhound bus and onto ��ñ��’s campus with a suitcase in one hand and his boom box in the other, he realized two things.

One: This was where his career in education would get its start.

Two: He hadn’t packed enough. Unlike hotels, campus residence halls don’t have pillows, bedsheets, or towels.

Growing up in a rough-and-tumble Bronx neighborhood and overcoming a difficult home life that led to him being adopted by another family when he was 13, Cordero was the first in his family to go to college. He became a leader at a charter school in his home community, guiding students facing obstacles like his own.

“School was always my place of solace,” Cordero says. “I always knew that I wanted to be in education, and I always knew that I wanted to be involved in making people’s lives better.”

Cordero came to ��ñ�� through the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) and later earned a master’s degree from the School of Education and Human Development, which is today known as the Department of Higher Education and Student Affairs in the College of Community and Public Affairs.

��ñ�� played such a profound role in his success that he’s maintained a close relationship with the University over the years, most recently serving on the Alumni Association’s Board of Directors. In 2023, his career accomplishments were recognized with the University’s Edward Weisband Distinguished Alumni Award for Public Service or Contribution to Public Affairs.

For the past 12 years, Cordero has held various leadership roles in the Harlem Children’s Zone, which offers parenting workshops, a preschool program, charter schools and child-oriented health programs. Their place-based model serves more than 22,500 children and families within its 97-block zone. More than 1,300 students from the Harlem Children’s Zone have earned college degrees, and more than 900 are currently enrolled in college.

As principal of the I elementary charter school, Cordero took pride in providing critical guidance to students whose lives mirrored his own at their age. His unique perspective and focus on individual achievement produced results: His students made substantial gains on their New York state math and English examinations, regularly outperforming other area schools.

“You can teach people curriculum, but you can’t teach compassion,” Cordero says. “I would always tell my staff to understand that although we’re surrounded by ‘the projects,’ we can choose to go in a million different directions with the right education.”

Within the Harlem Children’s Zone’s national branch, the William Julius Wilson Institute, which is working toward reaching a million students with educational programs across the country, Cordero affectionately describes his current role as “taking the show on the road.”

Cordero’s life lessons, especially those gained during his years at ��ñ��, have fueled his passion for inspiring students to keep growing. As an undergraduate student, Cordero frequently returned home with a collection of ��ñ�� admissions books to share with students at Bronx-area high schools to remind them a college education should never feel out of reach.

Having gone through ���s EOP remains a strong source of pride for Cordero, who plans to develop a workshop series with its students to show them, among other things, what further opportunities they could take advantage of through graduate degrees.

“Knowing that education has the greatest impact on shifting the trajectory of those who do not yet have it was really what attracted me to this work because I knew it could change everything for the better,” Cordero says.

Having spent a career guiding so many students, perhaps the strongest example Cordero set was for his own extended family.

“I’m the oldest of the grandchildren. After me, everybody graduated high school; everybody went to college.”