Girlie Delacruz, Northeastern’s 2025 Model Mentor and Coach Award winner, says good leadership is about listening
A Staff Excellence Award winner for her ability to foster growth in others, Delacruz explains what it takes to be a good leader and mentor.
Girlie Delacruz has a superpower: making connections.
It might not sound complicated, but in her role as Northeastern’s associate vice chancellor of teaching and learning, it’s everything for Delacruz, especially when it comes to people. It might explain why Delacruz is the winner of Northeastern’s 2025 Staff Excellence Award in the Model Mentor and Coach Award category.
Housed in the Office of the Chancellor’s Education Innovation division, Delacruz works with the university’s community-engaged teaching and research team and community service and civic engagement team to support teaching and learning both inside and outside the classroom. That includes everything from supporting Northeastern’s peer tutoring center to Northeastern Votes, a group of students, staff and faculty who promote voter registration, education and turnout.
Her work reaches across the university, but mentorship, guidance and service are laced through every part of it.
The secret to being a good mentor and leader? It’s often more important to ask questions than to provide answers, she says.
“I tend to come to situations with questions and curiosity first rather than coming in and feeling like I have the answers and I’m ready to direct,” Delacruz says. “I like to sit back and learn first, and that was my approach in working with my teams. … I always joke around about how one of my superpowers is being able to look at complexity and looking for themes and points of connection in that noise. That is my approach to coaching and mentoring the teams as well.”
Delacruz approaches her teams with both intense focus and sensitivity, especially since she, a relative newcomer to the university, manages people who have been at Northeastern for more than a decade. Delacruz takes the time to learn about her staff, their work, their strengths and any places they have room to grow. She takes all that information –– all that “noise” –– into account and uses it to find opportunities where her staff can thrive and grow in ways they might not even see.
“There’s not a one size fits all other than I have to figure out what’s working and what might not be working and do that either in collaboration with them because they already have that identified or with that ‘superpower’ of mine and try to see if there are things they haven’t seen yet,” Delacruz says.
Hillary Sullivan, director of community service and civic engagement and one of the many people who nominated Delacruz for her award, has grown more in the three years she’s been working under Delacruz than she has in the majority of her 13 years at Northeastern.
“She sees and hears what’s happening, and only then, when she feels like she has a really solid foundation, can she turn around and synthesize and make suggestions for how to make things better. In the last couple of years, I feel like I have grown so much,” Sullivan says. “I want to be like her. I want to be that kind of manager, and I think everyone feels that way.”
Sullivan adds that Delacruz’s experience working on inclusion and belonging efforts is evident in how she operates as a manager and mentor.
“She is really good at making space for everybody in the room,” Sullivan says. “She really has this unique gift of hearing what people are saying but also hearing what people are not saying.
The decision to nominate Delacruz was unanimous among those whom she manages, Sullivan says. Although the ever humble Delacruz was also intent on nominating Sullivan for the same award. For her, the award is less about her and more about the integral work her team does to support everyone from honors students and fellowship recipients to the community at large.
“They really do make my life very easy because I work with such a strong group,” Delacruz says. “For them to see that in me as well was –– tears. I know everyone says they didn’t expect it. I really didn’t expect it.”