Roberta Cordano
Roberta "Bobbi" Cordano is the 11th president of Gallaudet University. Cordano is the first deaf woman to become president of a U.S. university and the first woman and first openly LGBT person to be officially installed as Gallaudet President.Life
Cordano obtained her Juris Doctor degree at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1990. She was assistant attorney general for Minnesota.
She was assistant dean at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota,
Cordano was awarded the Hubert Humphrey award by the University of Wisconsin. She is among the first ten deaf women in the United States to have earned a Juris Doctor degree, and is among the first 50 deaf women to have earned a doctoral degree, overall.
Cordano is the first deaf woman to become president of a U.S. university, after Jane Kelleher Fernandes became the first deaf woman of a U.S. college at Guilford College in North Carolina. She is the first woman to be installed as Gallaudet President. Elisabeth Zinser had held the Gallaudet presidency for less than one week, during the Deaf President Now protest, and was never officially installed.
