The Department of Higher Education’s chief of staff will take over as its interim head following Commissioner Noe Ortega’s departure in September, before a permanent replacement is appointed early next year.
Department of Higher Education Senior Deputy José Luis Santos was appointed to lead the department on an interim basis on Monday, Aug. 24, 2026.
The Board of Higher Education unanimously approved Senior Deputy Commissioner José Luis Santos for the interim commissioner job at a special meeting Monday, following Ortega’s announcement earlier this month that he would step down from the post he’s held for four years to move closer to family.
Santos has been with DHE for three and a half years as the department’s chief of staff, chief innovation and strategy officer, and senior adviser to the commissioner.
As chief of staff, he’s been the liaison between the commissioner’s office and the governor’s secretary of education, according to his LinkedIn profile. He founded and led the Innovation Hub, an initiative launched in 2025 with a $2.1 million grant that pilots and scales programs such as paid student co-ops meant to improve college affordability and access across public higher education. As senior advisor to the commissioner, Santos’s LinkedIn says he provides “strategic counsel on policy and innovation initiatives focused on equity, access, and student success.”
“He’s helped turn an ambitious agenda into something that we’ve been able to accomplish,” Ortega said of Santos.
Previously, Santos was a faculty member at the College of Education at the University of Texas at Austin; Pepperdine University Graduate School of Education and Psychology; UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies; and founded the Latina/o Policy Research Initiative at the University of Arizona, according to his LinkedIn.
For six years he was the president of independent advisory firm JLS Strategies Group. He’s worked at edX, a massive open online course provider founded by Harvard and MIT, and was also the vice president for higher education policy and practice at Education Trust.
Santos said he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps when he was 17, taking community college courses while on active duty. With the help of the GI Bill, Pell grants, an ROTC scholarship, and, he said, the support of his lifelong partner, he later completed college.
“Students must remain at the center of every decision we make,” Santos said. “And that commitment is deeply personal for me as well. I’m the son of migrant farm workers from Mexico, and I’m a first-generation college graduate ... I know firsthand what happens when higher education, and the support that makes it possible, opens a door that might otherwise remain closed.”
In making a strong recommendation for Santos, Ortega told the board, “He’s a known commodity with all our partners. He has the trust and respect of our team, and understands both what work is going into what we’ve done and what it takes to get even more done. But most importantly, he shares the conviction that has guided our work expanding opportunity and improving student success.”
Education Secretary Steven Zrike cannot vote to recommend the nominee under the board’s rules (he abstained), but will have to independently give his approval for Santos to officially begin in the role. Zrike said he strongly supports the recommendation and plans to appoint Santos.
Zrike added that the department has a “lot of support from the administration” and that it’s “important that we have stable, consistent, and visionary leadership.”
Ortega will step down Sept. 30, after about four years on the job. During his tenure, the state gave approval for the first three-year bachelor’s degree programs in Massachusetts, oversaw a major expansion of early college, made community college free and majorly expanded financial aid options — most of these developments funded by an income surtax, which was approved by voters in the same month Ortega took the commissioner job.
Board Chair Chris Gabrieli said Monday that board members were disappointed to lose Ortega “both in professional and, in my case, I would add, personal terms, and I think many of you have expressed that to me as well.”
“When I arrived here in 2022, just a little under four years ago, we were in an extraordinary moment,” Ortega said. “Now, with new investments in public education, we have the responsibility and the opportunity to open the doors of higher education even wider, and we’ve done that together. We more than doubled our investments.”
Gabrieli said he and Zrike would like a new commissioner in place by “Q1 of calendar 2027. In other words, by January or February.”
The chair said he’d arrive at the September meeting with more details about the search and selection process.
“No more important process for a board than the selection of our department’s leader,” Gabrieli said.
