Susana Hernandez Morgan, Ed.D.
Dr. Morgan oversaw the district’s communications, public relations, grant writing/program development, funding development, and partnership cultivation efforts for 11 years before becoming the district’s Chief of Staff and Strategy in August of 2022, a role that includes serving as the district’s organizational and strategic leader, liaison to other City of Somerville departments, helping guide program development, and overseeing partnership development and cultivation.
During her 12 years in SPS, Susana has led and supported numerous critical district-wide initiatives. She oversaw the visioning process and development of an educational program plan for a new multimillion-dollar high school building project and co-led a community-wide listening project to learn about shared values related to learning experiences that community members want for children and teens growing up in Somerville to help inform school and community programming. She helped launch and actively supported several grant-funded initiatives that led to the successful educational redesign of the district’s high school learning experience, the development of an early education and care mixed delivery model, and the development of an innovative educator leadership model based on a distributed/shared leadership approach.
Susana is a DESE Influence 100 fellow and was a member of the inaugural cohort. She has served on the SPS Diversity Network team helping to lead the district’s diversification efforts over the last five years. As a founding member of the Somerville Children’s Cabinet, since 2017 she has also helped advance the city’s cross-sector efforts to eliminate the link between socioeconomic status and academic achievement by developing comprehensive child wellbeing and education systems.
Prior to joining Somerville Public Schools, Susana was the Chief Operating Officer for six years for a private government contracting research and development company based in Texas. During that time, she also served on the Board of Directors for the local Boys & Girls Club organization, including on the Executive Committee for three years and as Board Chair for one year. She is a graduate of The University of Texas at Austin where she earned a BBA in Management. She earned her doctorate in Educational Leadership & Policy Studies from Boston University in May 2023, where her research focused on the role of distributed leadership in creating and advancing culturally responsive schools.
