Collado grew up in Brooklyn, the child of Dominican immigrants;[5] her father drove a taxi and her mother worked in a factory.
[6] Collado became the first in her family to attend college when she enrolled at Vanderbilt University in 1989,[7] participating in a program called the Posse Foundation, which assembles small groups of diverse students to provide a support system to one another when they enroll together at the same college.
"[11] After completing her doctorate in clinical psychology, Collado worked in community mental health, then returned to the Posse Foundation where she spent six years as executive vice president.
[14][15] In 2010 she returned to Vermont to become an associate professor of psychology, dean of the college and chief diversity officer at Middlebury College[16][17][18] and then, beginning in January 2015, executive vice chancellor and chief operating officer at Rutgers University-Newark, where she led the development of the university's Honors Living-Learning Community.
In October 2022, Collado was appointed to serve as a Senior Fellow at Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.