Ruby Batalla, Director of Opening Doors to Achievement

Little did Ruby Batalla know that the ̽����Ƶ Pre-Collegiate Development program she joined as a high school senior would become the doorway to her education, her career, and her second family. As a first-generation student, Batalla’s gaze only extended as far as high school. Now, as the director of the Opening Doors to Achievement Office (ODA) at Leeds, she helps support first-generation students like her through their university experience and beyond.

“As a first-generation student, I didn’t know that higher education could be a career space,” said Batalla. “I fell in love with it as an undergrad and have stayed ever since. Doors open for a reason.”

For Batalla, her identity has shaped the course of her academic and professional life, influencing the mission and values she brings to her role as director of the ODA Office.

“Being first-gen, being Latina, is such a big part of who I am,” said Batalla, pointing to physical, cultural and familial traits. “Helping students find space for themselves is so important, especially at a university. You have to learn the norms quickly, while not giving up so much of yourself and your identity. It’s about adapting but not conforming, which is always hard. I hope I am a model of that, especially for first-generation students.”

��"Helping students find space for themselves is so important, especially at a university. ... It’s about adapting but not conforming.”

—Ruby Batalla

Unexpected changes and challenges

Batalla has been the director of ODA since 2019, stepping into the role right before the pandemic hit. To her, quarantine and isolation proved to be the most challenging time in her career so far. She missed her community and the interactions she enjoyed with students and staff. Still, she and the staff strived to find ways to continue supporting students and one another.

“Most of my staff have always loved being here for students,” she said. “To be so far removed was the hardest part. We leaned on each other to create virtual events.”

Since stepping into the director role, Batalla has also overseen the office’s name change—a protective measure to ensure that the office could maintain its space and continue its work during a time of federally mandated cuts related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

ODA changed its name from the Office of Diversity Affairs to Opening Doors to Achievement, keeping their well-known acronym while continuing to uphold their mission and work.

Batalla found the Leeds community and Dean Khatri extremely supportive throughout the entire transition. The school acted quickly to ensure that staff and students wouldn’t lose their support or resources from the office.

“We are, thankfully, very supported by the Leeds ecosystem,” said Batalla. “The cuts that have happened to other colleagues, and the dissolution of offices or programs, have not been a fear that the students, staff or I have ever had.”��

Growth in a supportive community

Having spent her entire academic and professional career at ̽����Ƶ, Batalla continues to share how lucky she feels to have found a place that has supported her identity and her passions so fervently.��

“I have been asked why I continue to stay, and if there is a detriment to CU being my only point of view,” she noted. “I always come back to the idea that CU is the state’s flagship university for a reason.

"As a CU alum, I know the impact of higher education. I know the power of what this degree means, and the power of the business school and the university as a whole.”��

��"As a CU alum, I know the impact of higher education. I know the power of what this degree means, and the power of the business school and the university as a whole.”

—Ruby Batalla

As a Leeds leader, a wife, a sports fan and a dog mom, Batalla moves through both her personal and professional life with that same sense of passion and purpose she first discovered when she came to CU as that hopeful high school student. Loving her interactions with students, as well as her role in connecting students to faculty and opportunities, she is determined and unwavering in her desire to integrate her values into everything she does.

“I didn’t change my last name when I got married. ‘Batalla’ in Spanish means ‘battle.’ I kept it because I tell people, ‘You need to know who you’re dealing with,” she explained.

“If you take away my last name, you don’t know who you’re dealing with—because I am warm and kind and helpful—but I am also relentless.”