Barbara Damron *
Commission Immediate Past Chair, Professor Emeritus and Visiting Professor of Nursing, University of New Mexico Health Sciences College of Nursing
Commissioner Barbara Damron (NM) is the Commission Immediate Past Chair, and Professor Emeritus and Visiting Professor of Nursing, University of New Mexico (UNM) Health Sciences College of Nursing. Prior to that, she served as the chief government relations officer for UNM. She was also New Mexico’s cabinet secretary of higher education for four years.
On the national level, Damron has been a National Academy of Medicine/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Congressional Fellow in the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP); an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow in the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions; a Congressional Fellow for Senator Lamar Alexander; Commissioner and 2025 Chair of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE); Commissioner of the Education Commission of the States; and sits on the Board of Directors of Complete College America.
Damron’s long professional history spans over 45 years (26 in New Mexico) and includes being a leader in education, a healthcare executive, an advanced practice nurse, a college professor, an international consultant, and a cancer scientist. She has built positive and extensive relationships within the state’s higher education community, as well as within the legislative and executive branches. She has also worked alongside community and state leaders on the promotion of civic engagement and was featured as a panelist at the Hispanic Leadership Institute’s (USHLI) “Latinas in Politics” forum previously at UNM.
Damron received a bachelor of science in nursing from Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska, a master of science in nursing from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and a doctorate in educational psychology from the University of Texas at Austin.
