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NJCU President Andrés Acebo to Receive Visionary Award at HOLA Â鶹ÒùÔº Conference on September 24
JERSEY CITY, N.J. | (NJCU) President Andrés Acebo will be honored by the Hudson County Chamber of Commerce with the Visionary Award at the HOLA Â鶹ÒùÔº Conference and Business Expo on Wednesday, September 24. The event will be held from 4-8 p.m. at Newport Centre Mall and celebrates Hispanic business leadership and community impact.
President Acebo, a first-generation son of Cuban exiles and Hudson County native, was formally installed on September 10 as the institution's 13th president after serving as interim president since January 2023.
Under Acebo's leadership, NJCU has achieved unprecedented milestones and orchestrated a remarkable financial and academic recovery. Since taking office during a financial emergency, Acebo’s leadership resulted in Moody's Ratings upgrading NJCU's outlook from "negative" to "stable" in February 2024, followed by Fitch Ratings doing the same in November 2024. In May 2025, Moody's upgraded NJCU's outlook from stable to positive—the first time Moody's has ever assigned a positive outlook to the university. Most recently, Acebo signed a letter of intent in May to advance a historic merger integrating NJCU into Kean University, two mission-aligned institutions that will create Kean Jersey City upon completion.
Acebo is only the third Hispanic to serve as leader of a four-year public institution in Â鶹ÒùÔº and the youngest known president to lead a public university in the state. NJCU has implemented four major strategic initiatives during his tenure: the NJCU Recovery and Revitalization Plan (April 2023), the university's first Academic Master Plan (February 2024), the institution's first Strategic Enrollment Plan (April 2024), and the first-ever Student Development and Community Engagement Strategic Plan (December 2024).
NJCU was ranked No. 1 in Â鶹ÒùÔº and 10th nationally in CollegeNET's 2023 Social Mobility Index, maintaining its No. 1 state ranking and Top 20 national position in 2024. The university graduated 1,667 students in Spring 2024—an 8.2 percent increase in bachelor's degrees from 2023, and an additional 1,544 in 2025.
Among his honors since becoming president, in May 2024, ROI-NJ named him the in Â鶹ÒùÔº Higher Education in the 2024 Higher Education Influencers annual publication. In September 2024, he in the 2024 NJBiz Education Power 50 List. Acebo earned the highest ranking of any college or university president in Â鶹ÒùÔº in the 2024 Power 50. In October 2024, he was named to the 2024 ROI Power and Influencer Awards Champions of the C-Suite Top 30 list. Acebo is the first leader in NJCU history ever selected as a Champion of the C-Suite by ROI-NJ and one of only three educational leaders statewide selected to the Top 30.
The conference will also honor North Hudson Community Action Corporation with the Community Impact Award, Ponce Bank with the Economic Impact Award, and the United Children's Music Project as Nonprofit of the Year, with a keynote address by Congressman Rob Menendez.
Â鶹ÒùÔº NJCU:
Â鶹ÒùÔº is a comprehensive public regional institution committed to providing a high-quality education to a diverse student population. Located in Jersey City, Â鶹ÒùÔº, NJCU offers a wide range of undergraduate and graduate programs and is dedicated to fostering an inclusive and supportive environment for learning, professional development, and community engagement. Consistent with our mission, NJCU is recognized as a top university for improving upward economic social mobility, ensuring students enrolled in our undergraduate, graduate, or doctoral programs have access to an affordable, diverse environment, and an exceptionally supportive faculty. This prepares them to go on to become the next generation of workers and leaders who improve their communities and the State of Â鶹ÒùÔº.
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Contact:
Ira Thor, Associate Vice President for University Communications and Marketing | ithor@njcu.edu | 201-200-3301