Sofia Toro serves as the Dean of Admissions at KGI with more than 25 years of experience in non-profit education. Toro came to KGI in September 2008 and managed the admissions, outreach and recruiting, student affairs, financial aid, and international student processing for KGI’s graduate programs. She brings operations expertise and experience in professional school admissions, thanks to her work in both undergraduate and graduate programs.
Her current responsibilities at KGI encompass all aspects of the admissions cycle and financial aid. She has been instrumental in driving the recruitment of diverse students to KGI across programs, including expanding recruitment efforts into Latin America, China, Africa and India. She has been successful at streamlining recruitment, admissions process, and financial aid while working to build awareness of STEM careers for first-generation and underserved students. During Dean Toro’s 15 years at KGI the institution has gone from 102 to 670 students enrolled.
Before joining KGI, Toro helped improve the organizational effectiveness of LA Universal Preschool (LAUP), the largest universal preschool effort in the history of the U.S. educational system. While there, she co-designed and implemented a continuous quality improvement system. She facilitated the California Award for Performance Excellence training for organizational learning, process improvement, problem-solving, and implementation. She also held admissions positions at Pepperdine University and Woodbury University.
Dean Toro is a first-generation college graduate with a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Woodbury University and an MBA from Pepperdine University. She serves on the California Graduate Diversity Forum Planning commission, El Camino College Biotechnology Advisory Board, and the Woodbury University, Alumni Advisory Council- Executive committee.