Jorge Klor de Alva, the father of Thiago ’27, was born in Mexico but is a long-time Bay Area resident. Today he is president of Nexus Research and Policy Center, a research institute focused on higher education, and Chairman of the Board of 3DMX, Inc., headquartered in Silicon Valley, whose Mexico-based University of Advanced Technologies offers degrees in computer graphics, game design, and development, cybersecurity, and mobile app technologies. He is a former President of the University of Phoenix and served on the board of its holding company Apollo Education Group, Inc. He is also past Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Apollo International, Inc., a global education company serving Europe, India, and Latin America.
Previously he was The Class of 1940 Professor at UC-Berkeley, before that, Professor at Princeton University. He has published dozens of scholarly articles, K-8 social studies textbooks, and a high school American history textbook (all published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), along with another 15 books in the social sciences. He also publishes on higher education in numerous U.S., and international media, ranging from The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal to Issues in Science and Technology and Philanthropy Daily.
Besides serving on numerous editorial boards and as a consultant to, for example, the Educational Testing Service, Graduate Record Exam, and the College Board, he co-chaired the commission that developed a new K-12 social studies curriculum for New York state and served on the Smithsonian Institute Council, the board of the American Association of Higher Education and the Advisory Council on Education and Human Resources of the National Science Foundation. He earned a B.A. and J.D. at UC-Berkeley and a Ph.D. at UC-Santa Cruz.