Born and raised in Southern Colorado’s San Luis Valley, Armando Valdez has always felt a deep connection to the region – and for good reason. He can trace his family’s presence in Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico back 16 generations to the late 1500s.
“We’ve settled in that area for 400 years,” Valdez said. “My family, over that timeframe, has gone 90 miles, so we find a place, we like it, we settle with it. Maybe that’s also why I’m so entrenched to it.”
Throughout his career – whether as an academic, administrator or entrepreneur – Valdez has felt a responsibility to Southern Colorado and the people who live there. The College of Business alum returned to his Colorado State University roots in 2019 when Gov. Jared Polis appointed him to the CSU System’s Board of Governors. But when Valdez became president of CSU Pueblo earlier this year, he saw it as an opportunity to serve his community in a new way.
“It’s that historical connection, those many generations, this foundation of this amazing kingdom being built for me to live through and experience – I’ve been very blessed in that manner,” he said. “So, I also feel a responsibility to ensure it’s here for another 16 generations and to pay that forward for the next generations, for all the benefit that I’ve received getting to this point.”
A rewarding new role as president of CSU Pueblo
Serving on the CSU System’s Board of Governors for 4 1/2 years prepared Valdez well for his new role as president of CSU Pueblo. It also gave him the opportunity to work on exciting projects such as developing CSU Spur, the System’s new Denver campus.
“It’s rewarding to be able to provide back the benefit that some governing board did for me as a student – hopefully there will be some student that will have such great benefit from contributions, decisions, input that I made,” said Valdez, who served as the board’s vice chair and its chair during his tenure. “I probably have one of the most unique experiences as a president to be able to see what it’s like to be at the top of that governing system, and then also to be a leader of one of the campuses, working in it.”
Valdez took over as president of CSU Pueblo on Feb. 1. After just a few months on the job, he says his favorite part has been the chance to interact with students again.
“I’ve been trying to see how I can teach a class, but so far, I haven’t been able to work that into my schedule,” he said.
He’s also incredibly excited for the future of CSU Pueblo.
“I see a lot of untapped potential,” he said. “There’s this talented set of employees. There’s a tremendous amount of opportunity here in Southern Colorado. I think we undersell some of our programs; we can highlight those a little bit more. With that, I bring that business background – not only my formal education in business, but also my career experience in business – to see how we can really push those boundaries, push those frontiers to see how we can serve our students and serve Southern Colorado.”
‘Parallel paths’ in higher education and business
Valdez was sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on Interstate 25 when he had the epiphany that led to his career in higher education – and his return to Southern Colorado.
It was the late ‘90s, and Valdez had recently completed his undergraduate degree and MBA at the College of Business on CSU’s Fort Collins campus. He had been considering going to law school to study natural resource and water law, but because he graduated from the master’s degree program in December, he was off cycle to apply. In the meantime, he decided to get a job in Denver as “a bridge.”
“I was down in the Denver Tech Center area, having very engaging interactions, very lucrative offers, but the worst thing they did was send me back to Fort Collins at about 4:30 in the afternoon,” Valdez said.
It took Valdez nearly four hours to travel from Denver’s south side to his home in Fort Colins. On top of the rush-hour commute, the sprawling Transportation Expansion (T-REX) Project was snarling traffic on I-25 in Denver.
“There were these horrible traffic jams, and I said, ‘This is miserable,’ and this is where I had my epiphany in my life of what I wanted to do,” Valdez said. “I thought, ‘I want to return to the valley.’”
Conversations with attorneys about the realities of the legal profession ultimately dissuaded him from going to law school, so he landed on higher education. Valdez’s mother taught at Trinidad State College, but he never expected to follow in her footsteps.
“I never thought it was for me, but I guess I couldn’t fight the genetics,” he said.
Valdez returned to CSU’s Fort Collins campus to begin a PhD in education and human resource studies with an emphasis in educational/community college leadership. Once he began teaching courses at CSU and at nearby Front Range Community College, he knew he’d found the right path.
At the same time, he also worked as a consultant and trainer for companies including Anheuser-Busch and HP.
“I got some of that corporate connection fix while I was still in higher education,” he said. “I just got to truly go and explore, so that led to different routes. That set a tone that even though I was in education, I always kept this parallel path of professional experience, of being able to explore.”
Valdez completed his PhD coursework except for the dissertation, and in 2006, he was finally able to return to the San Luis Valley. He began teaching at Adams State University in Alamosa, where he would spend the next 18 years. He retired in 2021 as director of the school’s healthcare administration program and an assistant professor of management, and he was honored as an emeritus professor of business.
However, Valdez never stopped working in business. Over the years, he pursued a wide variety of entrepreneurial ventures, from DJing to consulting to running his family’s farm and ranch in Capulin, a small town in Southern Colorado.
“It’s always been these parallel paths for me all the way through,” Valdez said. He quickly discovered that each of his careers benefitted the other. His real-world business experience was an asset in the classroom, and his academic experience lent him credibility in the business world.
“The teaching takes you into the concept-based, theoretical components, but these parallel paths gave me opportunities to actually apply it,” Valdez said. “I think my students definitely got a benefit from that experience and perspective, because I had the blend of both. I had the concept and theory, and I also had the practical engagement with it.”
While building careers in higher education and business, Valdez also got involved in government: He was appointed to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency, serving as executive state committee chair from 2012 to 2017, and he ran for Colorado Senate District 35 in 2012. From 2019 to late 2023, he was a member of the Board of Governors of the CSU System, and in 2021, after retiring from Adams State University, he became state director of U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development.
“It seems like I’ve had about five careers in my lifetime, and maybe this is the sixth one I’m working on right now,” Valdez joked.
Developing a love of business from a young age
For Valdez, the combination of paths he’s pursed makes perfect sense. He traces his passion for business back to growing up on the family farm in Southern Colorado.
“We’ve always approached it as a family farm operation. It wasn’t my mom and dad’s farm, it was all of ours,” Valdez said. “We were very much immersed into it and operate it in that same way today. So, I think with that engagement, that influence, I was always fascinated with business, wanted to learn more about it. I was fascinated with economics, I was fascinated with politics, I was fascinated with government. I think it was all those layers that intersected with the discipline of business.”
Starting three businesses in high school, he explored entrepreneurship early in life, but it was his time at the College of Business that taught him how to engage with new information and think through problems, serving as a foundation for everything he’s done in his career.
“You’re learning how to learn. You’re learning how to explore. You’re learning how to have inquiry of thought,” Valdez said. “All those things were things that I gained during my time at the College of Business. Going in, I probably thought it was more about learning about facts, figures that I had to memorize. Coming out of it, that was the lowest level of learning, and I had to be more mindful in terms of evaluation, synthesis, creating ideas and asking, ‘How do I implement those?’
“My journey through school was very transformational,” he said. “It helped me develop my leadership style, my leadership philosophy, many different layers that all go into this journey of life.”
CSU’s College of Business is building a community of action-oriented leaders focused on using Business for a Better World through its leading-edge research, accessible education and top-rated undergraduate and graduate programs. Connecting the principles of people, planet, profit, and purpose across organizational business goals has earned the College global recognition, including being named one of five Best Business Schools in the world for responsible business education by Financial Times.
