Santa Clara University Welcomes New Title IX Director
Kassandra Alberico, the Director of Equal Opportunity and Title IX Coordinator at Santa Clara University in her office in Loyola Hall on Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2025. Photo by Nina Glick
After several years of interim leadership, Santa Clara University’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Title IX has found stability under Kassandra Alberico, the University’s new Title IX Coordinator. Drawing on her background in law and years of experience in Title IX and equity work, Alberico hopes to build trust and community through her role.
“I realized there was a lot of critique of how we were handling those matters,” Alberico said. “I wanted to understand, why is it not working well? And I don’t think you can really understand it until you do it, and you can’t improve on something unless you understand it.”
In her role as the Title IX Director, Alberico will provide a neutral perspective to coordinate cases and their investigation from beginning to end, including spreading education on how to report and walking both parties through a resolution process.
“This job allows you to spend most of your time giving to people who really need it,” said Alberico. “I think what makes me so passionate about it is that these are complex cases, and you can’t always get an outcome that people are going to feel happy with. A lot of the time, people are still hurting. Being able to be a steward of that process, it feels very rewarding."
The Office of Equal Opportunity and Title IX has not had a consistent director for multiple years, and Alberico hopes that as she settles into her role, she can provide stability to the office and to students.
“I’m hoping that we’re able to build trust in the community,” she said. “That is a lot easier to do if you know who they are and you’ve seen them around.”
Alberico has found that this role often has a high turnover rate, likely due to burnout in trauma outreach roles. However, coming from a background in criminal prosecution, the work of Title IX is a welcome position.
“In criminal prosecution, there was a little bit of hopelessness, if the individual is still stuck in a really bad spot and they don’t have the resources that, here, people have,” she said, referring to a higher education context. “You can still continue your education and even if you make a big mistake and do something wrong, there’s so many people who want to see you succeed and grow as a person. I think that’s a really beautiful element of higher ed.”
Alberico has a multitude of goals she wants to accomplish during her time at Santa Clara, the main one being integrating her position into the University’s community. During her time here so far she has met with all the key stakeholders throughout campus and is planning on meeting with the Multicultural Center. She wants to take it a step further and meet with the sororities and fraternities, even though they are unaffiliated with the University, so they know that support is there if needed.
“I want people to understand what their options and resources are, and I don’t want them to be scared to talk to us,” said Alberico. “I’d like to create something that’s robust enough that no matter who’s in here, it will always be able to be leaned on.”
She finds the position of Title IX Director to be a hopeful one, even in the face of difficult allegations and cases.
“With Title IX, the group that you’re working with is people who are learning what it means to be people in the world,” she said. “Hopefully you can actually impact the kind of person that they’re going to be, even when they make a mistake.”