When I was going to MATC, my thought was to never stand still. I always want to grow and learn. I try to leverage my strengths to open as many doors as possible, to create as many opportunities for myself that I could.
As a teenage girl, Danielle Rodriguez had teenage girl plans.
Earn some money by working part time at the Milwaukee Public Library, enjoy her senior year at Milwaukee’s Riverside High School, receive her diploma and head off to college, where she’d live in a dorm and make all sorts of new friends.
Everything changed when the police, their lights flashing, pulled up to the friend’s house she was visiting. The officers told Rodriguez that her mother and father had been killed in a car accident. She and her 10-year-old brother were suddenly alone.
“The world stopped. Everything I had imagined doing before my parents died was gone,” she recalled.
She dropped out of Riverside and worked at a grocery store and a nursing home to support herself and her brother. “That first year was a flash, a blur,” Rodriguez said. “We were just trying to survive.”
Thanks to Milwaukee Area Technical College’s programs, courses and straightforward transfer process, she was able to continue pursuing her dreams.
She earned her High School Equivalency Diploma (HSED) from the college and began taking courses. She accumulated more than 60 credits and transferred to the now-closed Cardinal Stritch University, where she earned two degrees.
Her education has helped fuel a long career with the City of Milwaukee, a professional journey that hit a new peak in April 2026 when she was named director of the Department of Administration. Rodriguez oversees some of the city's core functions, including budgeting and purchasing, administering grants, information technology, intergovernmental relations, and environmental collaboration.
“When I was going to MATC, my thought was to never stand still,” Rodriguez said, sitting at the desk of her sixth floor office in the historic Milwaukee City Hall. “I always want to grow and learn. I try to leverage my strengths to open as many doors as possible, to create as many opportunities for myself that I could.”
Child of the city
Rodriguez was born in Milwaukee and grew up in the Riverwest and Washington Heights neighborhoods. Her parents openly talked about poverty, corruption, discrimination and educational disparities, she said, and also encouraged her to consider a career in city government.
“We were a proud union household. My mom talked about me getting in with the city if I ever had the chance. She knew even back then,” Rodriguez said.
College was always the plan until tragedy struck. She found an inner strength to keep going. “Raising myself and my younger brother, I really had no other option but success,” Rodriguez said.
After earning her HSED at MATC, she continued there. She loved the college’s affordability, flexibility and devotion to academics. “I was so impressed with the passion the MATC teachers had and the dedication they had to young people,” she said.
She carefully selected classes that best matched what local four-year colleges would accept for transfer credit, she said.
“I was meticulous about that,” she said. “I wanted the most seamless transition possible.”
Cardinal Stritch accepted all of her 60 credits. She started classes there and worked at the public library. At 20, she gave birth to a baby boy. Her daughter was born 2 ½ years later. She attended classes, worked and raised her children. The days were busy but structured: homework during lunch breaks and family time on the weekend.
“You do what you need to do because you have to do it,” she said. “Looking back you wonder how you did it.”
In 2013, she earned a bachelor’s degree in business and management. Three years later, she received her master’s in business administration.
“I started out not really sure what I wanted to do,” Rodriguez said. “I thought about joining the Army and maybe teaching. I figured if I just kept going, something would come.
“I found my strengths were organizing other people, managing processes and asking questions about how to do things differently. I discovered that I wanted to be a manager. I wanted to be a leader.”
Climbing the city ladder
Her municipal career began in 2014, when she was hired at the City of Milwaukee Department of Public Works to help implement IT systems. A year later, she became financial manager of the department’s parking fund. In 2019, she was named fleet operations manager. She worked at the city’s central garage on Canal Street, coordinating the repair of snowplows, garbage trucks and other municipal vehicles.
In 2020, she applied for the director of operations job. “I didn’t really think I would get the job. I applied to show other people in the city my skill set,” she said.
She got that job. Five years later, she used the same rationale to apply to the administration director position.
“It was an opportunity to meet with the mayor and the chief of staff and talk about the future of the city,” Rodriguez said. “This was unfiltered face time — a chance to sell them on who I am and what I believe. It was me again opening all the doors I could.”
More than 120 people from across the country applied for the position. Again, Rodriguez got the job and another door opened.
“Danielle has a record of leadership and accomplishment in city government,” Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said when appointing Rodriguez. “She also has my trust to lead one of the most complicated parts of my administration.”
During the next six months, Rodriguez said she plans to build relationships with the city’s nonprofit partners and business community, listen to what they have to say, and figure out how the city can help. She also will strive to make the city departments she works with more responsive, more collaborative and more efficient.
“Even leaders need leaders,” she said. “Everyone needs someone to bounce things off of, to consult with, to help make things run better.”
Her new position is another chance to do something new — to expand her horizons, learn new skills, form new relationships and create a new door that she can walk through.
“Maybe I have tried to create all these opportunities for myself because if something failed, there always would be something else,” she mused. “If something bad happens, I’d never have to worry about what I would do next. Walking through doors has become my superpower.”
Learn about MATC's transfer opportunities
About MATC: Wisconsin’s largest technical college and one of the most diverse two-year institutions in the Midwest, Milwaukee Area Technical College is a key driver of southeastern Wisconsin’s economy and has provided innovative education in the region since 1912. More than 35,000 students per year attend the college’s four campuses and community-based sites or learn online. MATC offers affordable and accessible education and training opportunities that empower and transform lives in the community. The college offers more than 180 academic programs — many that prepare students for jobs immediately upon completion and others that provide transfer options leading to bachelor’s degrees with more than 45 four-year colleges and universities. Overwhelmingly, MATC graduates build careers and businesses in southeastern Wisconsin. The college is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission.