Monica Parrish Trent, Ph.D.
Executive Director, National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation
Monica Parrish Trent, Ph.D., is the Executive Director of the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation, where she leads its work to build opportunity and awareness around jobs and careers in the restaurant industry. She holds more than 25 years’ experience building diverse, high-performing teams, developing cross-sector partnerships, and designing initiatives that address both student needs and labor market demands.
Across her career, Trent has driven evidence-based initiatives that transform institutions, expand opportunities, and improve economic mobility for millions of students. As a first-generation college graduate, her career spans faculty and leadership roles across diverse, multi-campus community colleges before moving into executive leadership in the national nonprofit sector. Prior to leading the Foundation, she served as Achieving the Dream’s Chief Program and Network Officer, where she led work across a national network of more than 300 community colleges, driving evidence-based initiatives in teaching and learning, student supports, workforce alignment, and K-college pathways that connect education directly to economic mobility.
A 2021–2022 Aspen Rising Presidents Fellow, Trent is a nationally recognized thought leader in system-level transformation. Her board service includes Partnership to Advance Transformation in Higher Ed, Credential As You Go, Collegiate Consortium for Workforce & Economic Development, George Mason University’s Inclusive Excellence Initiative, and Old Dominion University’s Community College Leadership Doctoral Program. Formerly, she served as a peer reviewer for the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and a commissioner on the American Association of Community Colleges’ Commission on Research, Data and Accountability. Named one of Diverse: Issues in Higher Education’s Top 25 Women in Higher Education (2023), Trent is a frequent speaker and contributor on leadership, teaching and learning excellence, and learner-centered innovation.