Common App CEO Joins Posse Board, Furthers Commitment to Equity in Higher Ed Admissions
Jenny Rickard is the president and chief executive officer of The Common Application, a nonprofit organization committed to the pursuit of access, equity and integrity in the college admission process. A longtime supporter of Posse, she was elected to the Posse National Board of Directors earlier this year.
Jenny grew up in Palo Alto, California, surrounded by the academic environment of Stanford University, where she watched her father complete a doctorate in education. Both her mother and father were teachers who emphasized the importance of education throughout her upbringing.
When the time came to decide her own college path, Jenny chose a liberal arts institution on the east coast—Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Her experience there sparked an interest in a career in college admissions.
“What I came to value was Posse’s full idea of identifying, supporting and empowering our next generation of leaders.”
“It ended up being this incredibly profound experience for me,” Jenny remembers of her time at Swarthmore. “Even though it was a smaller college, it was so much bigger because students were coming from all sorts of different backgrounds, different high schools, different communities. I could feel myself really transforming and opening my eyes.”
After graduating from Swarthmore, Jenny attended NYU’s Stern School of Business, earning an MBA. She began her career in admissions at NYU School of Law before returning to Swarthmore as the associate dean of admissions. In 2002 she became the dean of admissions at Bryn Mawr College, where she was introduced to Posse.
“Posse liberated me from the constraints in the admissions process,” Jenny says. “Posse’s way of identifying students, getting nominations from the community, it really did identify students who wouldn’t show up in a typical search. The talent identification was incredible. That’s when I became a real true champion. And a lot of times people look at this as an admissions initiative. But what I came to value was Posse’s full idea of identifying, supporting and empowering our next generation of leaders.”
Jenny rose to chief enrollment officer positions at Bryn Mawr and then at the University of Puget Sound, where she established a partnership with Posse.
“These innovative ways of outreach have the power to be transformative, and I’m excited to be part of this moment for Posse to really grow.”
In 2016 Jenny joined Common App as CEO. Since taking on the role, she has steered the organization in an expansion of its access initiatives, including the acquisition of Reach Higher, the college success campaign founded by former First Lady Michelle Obama.
In 2019, Jenny hosted intern Nick West, a Posse Veterans Scholar attending Vassar College, as part of his Jeff Ubben Posse Fellowship. Now as a member of the Posse Board, Jenny says she is most excited to see the program scale to reach even more students.
“The Virtual Program is incredibly exciting,” she says. “It will enable Posse to reach students in more places. These innovative ways of outreach have the power to be transformative, and I’m excited to be part of this moment for Posse to really grow.”
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