Dr. Constance Barnes
Director, CUNY ASAP|ACE National Replication Collaborative, The City University of New York, Office of Academic Affairs
Constance, a native New Yorker, brings over 15 years of non-profit and educational leadership to her work. Unknown to many, Constance began her undergraduate journey as a CompSci major at The University of Alabama, changed course to study Economics & English, and landed at a small tech company in New York, where she learned to program in COBOL.
Constance became involved with youth mentoring initiatives and pursued a Master’s Degree in Education at Mercy College. Her career in education spans the private, public and charter sectors, state departments of education and most recently, institutes of Higher Education at the City University of New York (CUNY).
In 2018, after a brief stint in Atlanta, Constance returned to NY and assumed multiple roles in the Mayor’s CUNY2XTECH/Tech Talent Pipeline initiative to expand access to opportunities in tech for minoritized students in CUNY schools.
Simultaneously, Constance ventured into entrepreneurship after participating in the 4pt0 Schools Essentials Fellowship and founded UnmaskEDU, LLC, an educational consulting firm. She has been a consultant for organizations in New York and Atlanta, partnered with CUNY to provide programming for young women of color, and her company served as a NYC Summer Youth Employment Provider (SYEP) during the pandemic.
Constance is the Director of CUNY’s ASAP|ACE National Replication Collaborative, leading a team that provides support to campuses nationwide, who seek to replicate these evidence-based college completion models. She is a 4pt0 Schools Essentials alum, a Leaders of Color Fellowship alum, Communitas America Social Impact Entrepreneur and CORO Leadership NY Fellow. Constance serves on Bronx Community Board 8, the Lehman College Alumni Advisory Board, and Nuasin Next Generation Charter School’s Board.
Constance holds a B.A in Economics from Lehman College, M.S. in Education from Mercy College, Certificate of Advanced Study in Administration from the College of St. Rose, and is a Doctoral candidate in Urban Education at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Education, where she received the school’s Donald M. Henderson Scholarship. Her research focuses on the under-utilization of Community Cultural Wealth as a sustaining support for Black, Indigenous Women of Color (BIWOC) pursuing tech-related studies in urban public colleges.
Constance is the Education Ambassador for Black Women in Computing with AnitaB.org.
