Suzanne Rivera

Suzanne M. Rivera (born 1969) is an American bioethicist, science policy expert, and president of Macalester College. She is the first female and first Latina president in the college’s history. Rivera’s presidential Inauguration ceremony was held at Macalester on October 9, 2021. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz proclaimed it as "Suzanne M. Rivera Day" in the state.

She currently serves on the board of the Science Museum of Minnesota; the National Board of Directors of College Possible, a national college access and success nonprofit; and the National Advisory Board of TeenSharp, an organization that prepares students from historically excluded groups for success at selective colleges and universities. She is a co-founder and member of the executive council of the Liberal Arts Colleges Racial Equity Leadership Appliance (LACRELA). Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan named Rivera to the Executive Council for the Young Women’s Initiative of Minnesota (YWI) in January 2021.

In January 2021, Rivera announced a partnership between Macalester College and the Posse Foundation to increase the numbers of Black, Indigenous and other students of color at the college.

In November 2020, Rivera offered to help cover the costs of bail if any Macalester College student was arrested during protests related to the 2020 presidential general election.

From 2011-2020, Rivera worked at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) in Cleveland, Ohio. While serving as Vice President for Research and Technology Management, she also served on the CWRU faculty in the Departments of Bioethics and Pediatrics.

Rivera's husband, Michael Householder, is a scholar of Early American Literature and author of the book Inventing Americans in the Age of Discovery: Narratives of Encounter (Ashgate, 2011). They met at Brown University and have two children together.

In 2003, Rivera moved to Dallas, Texas. While working at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center for Provost Alfred G. Gilman, she pursued a doctorate at the University of Texas at Dallas, earning her Ph.D. in Public Affairs (health policy) in 2008.

Rivera competed for and was awarded a Presidential Management Internship in 1993 and used it to rotate through the Region IX offices of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She then took a job in the Head Start Branch of the Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families in San Francisco, California. She moved to Irvine, California, in 1996, where she began her career in research administration and research ethics, first as a review officer in University of California, Irvine's Office of Research Administration and eventually became director of that office.

Rivera was born in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York, in 1969. She moved to Massachusetts in 1980, and attended high school at The Cambridge School of Weston. She obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brown University, and was the commencement orator for the class of 1991. Immediately following her undergraduate studies, Rivera earned a Master of Social Welfare degree at the University of California, Berkeley in 1993.