Harper College is closed on Friday, April 18, for Reading Day.
Polly Davenport, D.Sc., RN, FACHE, currently serves as the senior vice president and
market CEO for
Ascension Illinois. In this role, she is responsible for several acute care facilities
across Chicagoland
and more than 80 sites of ambulatory and transitional care settings.
She moved to Chicago from Little Rock, Arkansas, where she served as senior vice president
and chief
operating officer for Common Spirit – St. Vincent Health System. She has previously
held executive
leadership positions in Texas and Louisiana.
Polly began her health care career as a registered nurse and continues to keep her
nursing license
current. She is a Fellow of the American College of HealthCare Executives, currently
serves on the
boards of the Illinois Health and Hospital Association, Region 5 Policy Board of the
American Hospital
Association and the Harper Hope Executive Committee.
Polly enjoys serving as a mentor to aspiring health care professionals. She obtained
her bachelor’s in
nursing from the University of Texas San Antonio, her MBA from Our Lady of the Lake
in San Antonio,
Texas, and her doctorate in health administration from the University of Alabama Birmingham.
Polly enjoys the outdoors and traveling to spend time with her husband, two children and grandchildren.
Susan C. Rogers is the Chief People Officer of School Health Corporation, the nation’s leading provider of health supplies and services to school nurses, athletic trainers, special education teachers, physical education teachers, and early childhood educators. She oversees the Human Resources and Corporate Training departments, as well as the Exhibit/Tradeshow and Marketing teams. Susan also serves as the Chairman of the Board for the company.
Susan’s grandfather, Carleton Good, founded School Health in the 1950s. As a third-generation business owner, Susan is passionate about honoring her grandfather’s legacy and continuing his mission to help improve the health and well-being of children across the country.
Susan began working at School Health in 1993 as the V.P. of Administration in Marketing and Human Resources. She took over the role of President from her father in 2000, and in 2014, she became School Health’s Chief People Officer.
Susan serves on the Harper College Education Foundation Board and the Excel Beyond District 211 (EB211) Advisory Board. She is a recipient of the “Woman of Vision” award from Prevent Blindness America, which recognized her leadership role in fighting blindness and saving children’s vision. In 2024, she was named an Honorary Fellow by the National Association of School Nurses for her continued support of the organization and the school nursing profession.
Susan graduated from Indiana University with a B.A. in Speech Communications and received her M.B.A. from Lewis University in 1997.
With over 34 years in Software Engineering executive leadership and Digital Transformation roles, Sreelatha Surendranathan most recently served as Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer at UL Solutions.
This remit included Digital Product Strategy and Innovation, Software Engineering, Digital Architecture and AI Strategy. For a primarily brick and mortar business, this role represented a shift to Digital modes of Delivery, adjacencies provided by niche software solutions in sustainability and compliance and next gen productivity augments via leverage of AI and ML.
A strong proponent of Responsible AI, she created the governance charter for building and leveraging AI within the ULS digital ecosystem. This included thought leadership roles working closely with NIST working groups and the EU AI teams on governance framework for functional safety considerations in AI.
Prior to ULS, Sreelatha served as Vice President of Engineering at GE Healthcare. She was an integral part of a First of a Kind flagship Analytics platform for Hospital systems, the GEHC Command Center. This was a comprehensive suite of predictive analytics that provided decision support for hospital operations, clinical support and disease progression. This platform gained global acceptance with over 80 hospital systems adopting the solution as their patient care hub and operational command center.
In addition to the Command Center, Sreelatha also led the execution of a multi modality Traumatic Brain Injury analytics suite that used data from multiple modalities, biomarker data, EMR specifics to predict disease progression from blunt force trauma.
As Chief Technology Officer of SCO Logistics, she created a first of a kind Transportation Management System and supported a successful M&A with Transplace, a global transportation and logistics software provider.
In her engineering leadership roles, she leveraged a Build-Measure-Learn approach to innovation backed by strong fiduciary control and need for proven Return on Investments. Such a Lean Startup and growth mindset enabled innovation that culminated in strong commercial opportunities.
She is often invited to speak at Innovation Summits and brings her love of Shakespeare, Leading with Empathy and Technology to these circuits.
She is a strong proponent of Women in STEM and equity for disadvantaged youth. As a Board member of Lumity, a philanthropic organization in Chicago, she was able to further this advocacy via corporate support and opportunities for employment for key talent. In 2023, she was recognized as one of Chicago's Leaders of Color.
Sreelatha lives in Chicago with her husband and two daughters, a dog and two senile but wonderful cats.
In her role with Mortenson, Sheryl leads our Chicago business in delivering the highest
quality commercial projects in higher education, healthcare, data centers, cultural
and sports. Sheryl’s 25+ year career has led her to delivering some iconic projects
for customers such as Harper College, University of Chicago, United Airlines, Meta
and Lurie Children’s Hospital. Her real joy comes from working directly with clients
to understand their business and ensuring their built environment supports their business
needs. Sheryl focuses on developing teams to deliver new programs that help advance
our society at large. Sheryl is involved with the Economic Club of Chicago, The Chicago
Network and the HOPE Giving Circle. She spends her free time watching a lot of high
school sports and trying to hang out with her three teenage daughters.
Dr. Avis Proctor became the sixth president of William Rainey Harper College in July
2019. With over 30 years of experience working in multicultural environments as an
innovative mathematics educator and administrator, she is committed to transforming
lives through the power of education using research-based instructional strategies,
strategic community engagement and future-focused economic development which all lead
to strengthened educational opportunities that impact generations.
Dr. Proctor believes in working closely with local school districts, the business community, and higher education institutions. Her work at previous institutions has included expanding articulation, internship, and employment opportunities to enhance student-employer connections for current students as well as alumni. She has also provided collaborative leadership for early childhood education, dual enrollment, and college readiness/completion initiatives which have gained national attention.
Dr. Proctor provides leadership on local and national boards including American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) and Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research.
During her tenure at the College, Harper has been recognized as an Achieving the Dream (ATD) Leader College of Distinction in 2020 and 2023, and as a 2023 Aspen Top 25 institution and as a 2025 Aspen Top 20 institution, and is a lead member institution of The Bloch Quantum Tech Hub established by the CHIPS and Science Act in 2023.
Dr. Proctor earned her bachelor’s degree in Mathematics Education at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, a Master of Science in Teaching Mathematics at Florida Atlantic University, and her Doctorate in Higher Education at Florida International University.