Gov. Jay Inslee recently appointed Travis Exstrom to the Highline College Board of Trustees.

Exstrom joins a board that has served a collective 11 years at Highline.

“Travis Exstrom brings a love of the Highline community through his work on foundations and at Microsoft,” Highline College President John Mosby said. “His beliefs and advocacy are in perfect alignment with our values here at Highline College. Our college is fortunate to bring a stellar community member and professional to an already committed and service-minded Board of Trustees.”

Exstrom, a Burien resident since 2008, has years of experience as an attorney with his current role within the Compliance & Ethics organization at Redmond-based Microsoft and past career at Seattle-based law firm Perkins Coie.

But his strongest connection to the Highline community comes from his family’s long-standing roots in the Highline region and his eight years as a trustee for the Highline Schools Foundation, a non-profit that supports Highline Public Schools through private contributions. Although his time on the foundation’s board ended in December 2020, Exstrom stays involved as emeritus trustee to the foundation.

Through that journey, Exstrom said he started to gain a greater visibility of Highline College and built relationships with the current and past president of Highline in addition to Highline’s Board of Trustees and the Highline College Foundation. In those relationships, he said he saw the opportunity presented by the college as an institution serving this community to be a center of excellence in its programming, its international student engagement and its diversity and inclusion work.

When asked what his goals would be as a Highline College Trustee, Exstrom responded that he hopes to support Mosby and leadership staff to execute the institution’s strategic goals in order to meet students’ needs now and in the future.

Those future needs include connecting students with the technology they need to learn. Exstrom said the pandemic exacerbated many issues within the community surrounding access to broadband internet, which will continue to be a vital issue for current and future students.

“I think the digital divide and digital equity is certainly one of those areas,” Exstrom said in response to his goals. “Continuing to embrace diversity and inclusion is another and international engagement would be a third.”

In addition to Exstrom’s Highline Schools Foundation leadership, he was also the president of the Highline Premier Football Club for two years and has volunteered with the Housing Justice Project and the King County Neighborhood Legal Clinic in Kent.

Exstrom describes his family as a big soccer family – both he and his wife played at the collegiate level in the Northwest Conference, and his wife works for the Seattle Sounders Football Club. His two daughters attend school locally with one in Highline Public Schools. Exstrom enjoys kayaking, the outdoors and playing sports, like soccer and football in his spare time.

Exstrom replaces trustee Fred Mendoza, who completed two terms in November 2021 after serving 10 years on the Board of Trustees.

For information about the Highline College Board of Trustees, visit trustees.highline.edu.