Dr. Kristi Wellington-Baker

Dr. Kristi Wellington-Baker serves as the leader of the US Higher Education Learner Innovation portfolio at Amazon Web Services, where she works at the nexus of institutional strategy, equity-centered design, and emerging technology. Her portfolio is anchored in three imperatives that define the contemporary challenge facing higher education leaders: deepening student and community engagement, expanding access to relevant and responsive learning pathways, and reducing the administrative friction that too often stands between contemporary learners and their goals. Drawing on more than two decades of leadership across Student Affairs, education policy, and technology integration, Dr. Wellington-Baker brings a combination of practitioner credibility, policy acumen, and systems-level thinking to her work. Her institutional leadership in equity-focused initiatives — spanning access, persistence, and completion — produced transformational outcomes recognized by both the Aspen Institute and Columbia University’s Community College Research Center. An Aspen Institute Presidential Fellow Alumni and published researcher, Dr. Wellington-Baker has authored scholarship examining equity in transfer pathways and consulted broadly with two- and four-year institutions nationwide on strategies to achieve measurable, equitable student outcomes. Prior to joining AWS, she led strategic initiatives and statewide scaling of guided pathways at the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges which garnered the largest single legislative investment in community and technical colleges in Washington State history.