Meet the Team

Daniel Pascoe Aguilar, PhD, MDiv, is passionate about problem solving and collaborating with students, alums, the university community, and community organizations on meaningful partnerships and innovative strategies for the development of a diverse, purpose-driven, interculturally sensitive, and systemic-challenge-ready next generation of leaders. Currently, Daniel is Excelsior University’s CDO & founding director of the Center for Social Justice, where he is co-leading the inception of a JEDI (justice, equity, diversity and inclusion) agenda based on a systemic approach to DEI and Social Justice organizational development with the goal of facilitating Excelsior’s becoming a Multicultural Organization through the operationalization of 7 key engagement and impact strategies mapped through a maturity model.

Right before this role, Daniel served as associate provost for immersive learning and career design at Drew University in the New York City larger metropolitan area, where he led Launch, a comprehensive, equitable approach to undergraduate education designed to facilitate all Drew University students’ identification of their purpose, their preparation for their careers, and their contribution to their communities and/or the world. Prior to his tenure at Drew, Daniel served as executive director of Career Services at Ithaca College, director of the University of Oregon Career Center, director of Career Services at Seattle University, director of alum career services and associate director of employer relations at the University of North Texas, senior associate director and chair of career courses at Indiana University, director of the crisis center for homeless families of the SF County, and minister in diverse religious organizations in México and the US.

Daniel has completed 3 graduate degrees in the US: a PhD in Educational Systems from IU, a Master of Divinity from Palmer Theological Seminary, and an MS in Education from IU, as well as a BA in Industrial Design from Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in México. For the last 12 years, he has offered consulting, speaking and training services to universities, their career centers, and community organizations on the preparation of the next generation of leaders and the enhancement of the diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice of our work. He has also been a song writer, a classical pop and oratorio/opera singer, and a recording artist throughout his life, including the publication of 10 albums.

In 2014, Daniel received the UO Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Award and, in 2016, the UO Student Employment Enhancement program he founded and led earned the One Oregon Award. Throughout the last few years, he has had the opportunity to serve as chair of the Capital Region JEDI Leadership Consortium and the UO Division of Student Life Multicultural Organization Development initiative, as co-chair of the global Future Talent Council DEI Think Tank and the DU Committee on Reimagining Undergraduate Education, as faculty of the Career Services Institute, and as founder and chair of the IC Experiential Learning Alliance, the UO and IC Student Employment Enhancement initiatives, the UOAdvantage Design Team, and the UO International Student Career Alliance. He is also a current member of the Forbes Nonprofit Council, a mentor of the AAC&U College to Career Institute, and a recent member of the NACE Strategic Positioning Taskforce.

Pamela Jimenez is the program director for Excelsior University’s Center for Social Justice. She is the former founding director of the Camino program, a bilingual associate degree program for native Spanish-speaking students at Manhattan College. Pamela was also an intern and mental health specialist at one of the only Spanish-speaking and LGBTQ drug rehabilitation units operated by the Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse (OASAS) in New York City from 2005-2009. Dr. Jimenez has extensive background working with Spanish-speaking adults, bilingual families, and first-generation immigrants who have emigrated to the U.S. for college opportunities within the past five years. Dr. Jimenez is passionate about creating a diverse and equitable campus climate for underrepresented students and the college environment’s impact on her students’ academic achievement. She has a doctorate in higher education executive leadership and a master’s in mental health psychology. She is driven by cultivating motivation, developing curiosity and leadership, and training employees to react to challenges in ways that will broaden their critical thinking skills, experiences, and personal development. Pam pursued her doctorate research by examining the influence of the perception of fit and racial identity on the career choices of African-American/Black police officers in the New York City Police Department. Dr. Jimenez’s research interest includes the “organizational fit” of underrepresented populations, Latinx students, in higher education and equitable academic environments.

In the fall of 2019, Tammy joined Excelsior University as Director, Career Readiness Center. In this role she is responsible for the growth, direction, implementation, and oversight of services for career development. Designed for a distance education environment, she provides a continuum of comprehensive resources, tools, information, programs, and services appropriate for adult learners in a remote environment. Tammy has transformed and reimagined the “Career Services” to Holistic Career Readiness with updated and trending tools, resources, increased engagement, internal and external collaborations, programming, career-related events, and experiential learning. In 2019 she created a group for Online Career Readiness Professionals with NACE.  The National Association for Colleges and Employers Board of Directors officially added the group in January 2020, making a total of 17 affinity groups in the association. Tammy led this group for over two years with a co-lead Jessica Oviedo, Director of Career Services at UCLA Extension supporting over 375 career professionals in higher education across the country. Representing Excelsior University’s Career Readiness Center Tammy is an active member, thought leader and contributor in NACE to share best practices, discuss new and emerging trends as well as ideas and research for data gathering.  

Tammy started her professional career with Goldman Sachs while raising her son and pursuing higher education to earn her degrees. She spent 8 years with the firm and quickly elevated from an administrative capacity to Portfolio Administration and then Employee Relations Manager of the firm. She was then promoted to lead and manage a newly formed team of 30+ which included Investment Professionals, Administrative staff, and interns as a Senior Investment Professional Administrator. She directed top-level communication with the firms’ highest profile clients; Fortune 500 CEOs, entrepreneurs and celebrities with a client base that grew from 40 clients with $400MM to over 130 clients with $3B in assets. Her role involved research, transactions, client service, account maintenance, interpretation and analysis. She calculated, analyzed, and measured client portfolio performance and growth providing reports to Senior Management and Vice Presidents at Goldman Sachs. Her team was earmarked as top-level, highest performing and accomplished team in the AYCO company. As a result, she was selected to assist in leading the development and implementation of quality control (TQM) methodologies & resources for operations, service delivery, investment product knowledge & financial reporting.  

In 2008, she made a career change from the investment industry to nonprofit. As Association Director of Administration & Cause-Driven Leadership® with The Capital District YMCA, she served on the senior management team for 13 YMCA locations in the Capital District (Albany, NY).  Tammy was selected by the President/CEO to infuse Living Our Cause & Cause-Driven Leadership® into the Capital District YMCA Association Culture; bringing the Y brand to life operationally within each branch. Tammy led and developed employee trainings, operational practices & to develop employees as leaders in their careers. In this role she created and implemented association reward and recognition programs, staff performance evaluation tools infusing brand and cause-driven competency measurements. She positively updated the culture with Cause-Driven Leadership® initiatives & competency model methodology for business operations with her work being recognized nationally by YMCA of the USA, as trendsetting. As creator and implementer of a new nationally recognized and highly regarded employee reward and recognition program, it is now utilized in other YMCA Associations across the US movement. As Director of Administration she built relationships and fundraised, building boards and connecting with key community leaders. In addition, she managed the association corporate office and executive expenses budget; major purchases & procurement. She served as manager and coordinator for all aspects of national and local events for staff, board members and volunteers. Leading all major internal and external communications to the media, public, staff and volunteers she was earmarked as the corporate office go-to person for all community, business leaders, media and board members.  

In this role Tammy also became a national trainer of leadership with YMCA of the USA teaching across the country. Additionally, she served YMCA World Service in the USA and internationally. She taught English at Hoa Binh Primary School in rural Vietnam and assisted in a global mission service project building new classrooms to provide children the ability to attend school daily due to space constraints.   

Following her time with the YMCA, she transitioned into higher education with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2015. She served as Assistant Director for Career Services and External Relations in The Lally School of Management. Tammy facilitated professional development courses (i.e., Interviewing, Networking, Negotiations and LinkedIn) to graduate level students, led and created a new mentoring program (400+ students/1:1 matches), built employer, corporate and alumni partner relationships across the country and beyond and cultivated numerous career and professional development opportunities for students. Tammy was responsible for cultivating internships, co-ops, jobs and experiential learning opportunities and a variety of career-related events such panels, networking, information sessions, guest speaking events and in-person company treks. Tammy developed a series of New York City, Boston, and Silicon Valley career exploration trips for all graduate and undergraduate students with prominent industry leaders in companies such as Apple, Google, Facebook, Nasdaq, NYSE, Deloitte, IBM to name a few. In conjunction with Lally faculty and program directors she connected companies to provide real-world project as part of experiential learning in courses. She was selected by the students to be Advisor for The National Association of Women MBA’s (NAWMBA) and led this group.  

In the fall of 2018, her role expanded to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s centralized Center for Career and Professional Development as Assistant Director for Employer Relations. She assisted to lead part of a newly expanded Employer Relations Team created to support new initiatives on campus for The Arch program at RPI. In this role she served The Lally School of Management and The School of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences to reach student recruitment goals for The Arch. The newly formed team was tasked with reaching goals to accommodate the number of semesters long off-campus internships needed for The Arch Program at RPI.  

Education, Licenses & Certifications, Publications, Honors, Awards, Organizations and Professional Associations can all be found on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tammyspenziero 

EDUCATION
Russell Sage College, Albany NY
Master of Science, Organizational Management and Public Administration, May 2010
Bachelor of Business Administration, December 2006
Graduate Certificate, Managing Non-Profit Organizations, May 2010

The Shanghai University of International Business and Economics,
International MBA Certificate, Chinese Business & Multi-Cultural Studies, May 2009

YMCA of the USA Leadership Academy
National Leadership Trainer Certification

PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
She is a current member of The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), Founder and Co-lead for the 17th Affinity Group – Online Career Service Professionals. Task Force Member and Chair of the Foundational Group for the NACE Mentoring Program (June 2021-June 2022), and a past member of The MBA Career Services & Employer Alliance; (July 2015 – Oct 2018), National Association of Student Affairs Professionals in Higher Education (NASPA); (July 2015 – Oct 2018) and The Sage Colleges Alumni Board, Secretary and Outreach Committee Chair; (June 2015 – January 2017)