Eduardo González, Jr., BA, MPA, CCDP/AP

Assistant Director Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Cornell Cooperative Extension

A dynamic and engaging lifelong learner, leader, storyteller, and DEI professional who believes that change is possible when we open ourselves up to being transformed by the people, spaces, and places with whom we connect. Whether serving as a coach, mentor, youth advocate, adjunct professor, educator, trainer, facilitator, or caring human being, he intentionally centers connection, courage, and compassion in the work of personal, interpersonal, organizational, and societal transformation. 

Born in the Bronx to Puerto Rican parents and raised in a working-class community in South Jamaica, Queens, his early years were marked by great curiosity about the racial, ethnic, class, linguistic, gender, and many other dimensions of differences he experienced and observed all around him.  This curiosity served as the birthplace of much of his passion for creating supportive and challenging learning communities of inquiry, imagination, dialogue, and discovery.

His early career experiences as a youth advocate as well as an educator with a batterer’s intervention program awakened him to the ways in which we are injured and injure others through the conditioning and socialization we receive across our multiple and intersectional identities. It was here that he started to understand the long-lasting, detrimental  impact of individual, interpersonal, and intergenerational trauma on how we show up in the world. This put him on a path to centering healing and wellness as thriving strategies for achieving individual and collective liberation.

As a Black Latino, middle-class, cisgender, heterosexual man, he is actively working on reclaiming the untapped creativity, imagination, play and joy of his childhood. A lover of cooking, photography, and laughter, he resides with his spouse and two young children in what is historically Lenape territory currently known as the Bronx. He is a Cornell Certified Diversity Professional/Advanced Practitioner (CCDP/AP) with over 30 years of experience working with a wide variety of not-for-profit and educational institutions to implement and sustain organizational transformation efforts that promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice.  He derives great joy from the powerfully transformative work of convening, connecting, supporting, and inspiring coalitions of the willing to lead the relational work of systems change.

He currently serves as the Assistant Director for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Cornell Cooperative Extension in New York. He holds a Bachelor’s in Human Services and a Master’s in Public Administration from Pace University.