Ginger Ostro
Executive Director
Illinois Board of Higher Education
Ginger Ostro is Executive Director of the Illinois Board of Higher Education. Ms.Ostro is charged with leading the agency as it renews its focus on improving college attainment and closing gaps in outcomes for students of color, low income students, and rural students. She brings extensive policy and finance leadership to the role, as she was most recently the interim Chief Financial Officer and Vice-President of Financial Operations at Chicago State University. Earlier in her career, she served as Deputy Executive Director at the Illinois Student Assistance Commission and as Director of the Office of Budget Planning at Governors State University. Ms. Ostro served as Executive Director of Advance Illinois as it helped architect the successful effort to fix the nation’s least-equitable K12 funding formula. She played a lead role as budget director and CFO at Chicago Public Schools in developing and implementing a more equitable system of allocating funding across schools as well as managing the district’s $6 billion operating budget and the capital budget. She also served in several roles in state government, including over six years at the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget, where she rose to director. Ms. Ostro holds a Bachelor’s degree in politics, economics, rhetoric and law from The University of Chicago and a Master’s degree in public policy, health and human services from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
