Claire Mitchell(she/her/hers)

As Director of Business Development, Claire works to cultivate and nurture relationships with prospective clients. This includes identifying new business opportunities and strategically positioning CCA’s services. She works to intimately understand each client’s unique needs and objectives and collaborates with the agency’s internal teams to develop customized solutions.  Claire is committed to fostering open communication fostering open communication and establishing lasting partnerships with our clients.

Claire has over 16 years of experience in higher education program administration and research. Her work in higher education has afforded her opportunities to partner with faculty, policymakers, and practitioners at institutions ranging from small liberal arts colleges to large R1 universities to better understand “what works” to best prepare students to pursue and persist at the postsecondary level. While at the National Center for Postsecondary Research, Claire was a part of a team exploring P-16 programs aimed at bolstering postsecondary student enrollment and retention. She leveraged this experience at the American Council on Education where she focused on national remedial education initiatives, challenges facing student success at community colleges, and evolving distance and workforce development platforms.

In the past 5 years, Claire transitioned to the higher education consulting sector where she has worked closely with senior leadership at colleges and universities across the country to support their strategic planning and market research needs for better understanding degree feasibility and enrollment challenges. As a manager in the higher education group at MGT Consulting, Claire also led strategic planning efforts at Oregon State University, the University of Texas-Permian Basin, Maricopa County Community College District, and a variety of other postsecondary institutions and state higher education councils. This work has given her firsthand experience and understanding of the challenges facing many colleges and universities, particularly in an everchanging post-COVID landscape.

Claire holds an MA in higher education from the University of Michigan and PhD in higher education from the University of Virginia. She splits her time between her homes in Charlottesville, VA and Bozeman, MT, where she loves to spend her time backpacking, trail running, and skiing in the mountains with her French bulldog Violet and rescue dog Goldie.