Marla A. Franco, Ph.D., serves as the Assistant Vice Provost of Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) Initiatives and the Executive Director of Assessment, Research, and Grant Development at the University of Arizona (UA). She led efforts at the UA towards becoming federally recognized as a Hispanic Serving Institution in 2018 and is now working across the full scope of the university enterprise to develop a centralized vision for optimizing this designation in a way that truly benefits students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members. Her leadership recently resulted in the UA receiving the inaugural Seal of Excelencia, which was awarded by Excelencia in Education to nine higher education institutions across the nation for intentionally serving Latino college students and for demonstrating positive student outcomes. Dr. Franco is also co-founder of the STEM in HSI working group, whose mission is to engage diverse units and stakeholders at the UA and other southwestern HSIs in developing an institutional sense of “servingness” at new and emerging HSIs. With close to 20 years of experience in higher education, she leads strategically, courageously, and with a fierce passion for what she does.