Deborah Wilds (Washington) currently serves as the president and chief operating officer of the College Success Foundation. Before coming to the foundation, Wilds was a senior program officer for education at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, where her responsibilities included serving as the liaison to the Gates Millennium Scholars Program, the Gates Cambridge Scholars, and the Washington State Achievers Program, as well as developing other college-access -related programs for low-income students and students of color. Prior to her work at the Gates Foundation, she served as the deputy director of the American Council on Education's Office of Minorities in Higher Education in Washington, DC. Wilds has conducted extensive research in the area of college access for low-income students and students of color and was the senior author of the Annual Status Report on Minorities in Higher Education. She was also the cofounder and director of New Era Education, an independent preschool in Baltimore. Wilds was awarded her Ph.D. in education policy, planning, and administration at the University of Maryland at College Park. She received her M.S. in education administration from Howard University and her B.S. from the California State University, San Diego, in speech pathology and audiology.