Educational Opportunity Program

 Roseanne is Director of the Office of Undergraduate Advising for the College of Letters and Science.  A graduate of Berkeley, she been a professional Berkeley staff member for over 29 years.  She served as Director of the Cal Corps Public Service Center for 10 years, and since 1992 she has provided leadership in New Student Services, where she had been Director since 1999. During her professional career, Ms. Fong has received campus recognition for her service with the Chancellor’s Outstanding Staff Award, the Excellence in Management Award, the Student Life Achievement Award, and she was nationally recognized as the Outstanding Orientation Professional in 2006. She has also been a prominent member of numerous significant committees and task forces on the campus–the Alcohol Prevention Coalition, Council of Staff Organizations, Student Systems Policy Committee, Cal Veteran’s Group.  Additionally, Ms. Fong served as Chair of the Asian Pacific American System-wide Alliance (APASA) for nine years. Roseanne is also one of the very first EOP Peer Advisors!

María received a bachelor’s degree from Cal, a master’s degree from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, and earned her doctorate from the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies at UCLA. Dr. Ledesma also served as Student Regent for the University of California’s Board of Regents, the first Latina to hold this post. As student regent, Dr. Ledesma led and coordinated a comprehensive study of the role and state of diversity within the University of California ten years after the passage of Proposition 209, which eliminated the use of race and ethnicity in public employment, contracting, and education across the state of California. She earned a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship and a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, which she completed at the University of California, Berkeley Law School under the mentorship of Dean Christopher Edley. During her postdoctoral research, she continued to examine the role and impact of legal jurisprudence on educational opportunities for historically under-represented groups throughout the K-20 pipeline. Dr. Ledesma has also worked in K-12 with students, parents, teachers, and community members to prepare and support historically under-represented students in fulfilling their aspirations to attend college. She currently works as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Utah.

Abel is vice president of Caldwell Flores Winters Inc., where he has advised on the issuance of $2 billion in general obligation bonds for schools and colleges throughout California. In 2000, Guillén was a policy analyst for the Gore/Lieberman campaign. He has also been a research associate for the United States Department of the Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund in Washington, D.C., and in the 1990s Guillén was in the Coro Fellows Program in Public Affairs and a Jesse M. Unruh Assembly Fellow. The first in his family to attend college, he has a Masters of Public Policy and Management from the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley and a B.A. in Sociology, also from UC Berkeley. Abel currently serves as on the Peralta Community College District Board of Trustees.

Eric  was born and raised in the Bay Area. A product of public schools, at Cal he majored in Sociology and minored in African-American Studies. After working for several years, he enrolled at UC Hastings College of the Law, where he was Vice-President of BLSA and active in student government. While in law school, Eric served as a judicial extern, a tutor, summer in-house counsel at Hewlett Packard and a summer associate for a large firm. Eric balanced all of this with his passion for critical race theory and social justice, which led him to join the Hastings Race & Poverty Law Journal, eventually becoming the Journal's Symposium Editor his 2L year and Editor-in-Chief his 3L year. The Hastings community recognized his leadership that same year by awarding him Student Leader of the Year for 2006. Eric is currently an associate at Meyers Nave in Oakland, California.

Erika is the Executive Director of the Undergraduate Program at the Haas School of Business. She also teaches UGBA 156AC, Diversity in the Workplace, which provides an academic forum for students to interrogate issues of equity and inclusion through a diversity lens. With over 12 years of business experience in the private and not-for-profit industries, her interest has been in student services, professional development and leadership training. As a Manager at INROADS/Northern California, she interacted regularly with undergraduate students and Fortune 500 employers in the professional services and other industries. She worked as Program Administrator for the Summer Youth Development Program at the McKesson Corporation and as a Project Coordinator in Community and Government Relations at the Regional Offices of Kaiser Permanente. As an undergraduate, she was involved in a number of activities including the Black Recruitment & Retention Center, Stiles Hall, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., Onyx Express and the Incentive Awards Program. Starting at Cal via Summer Bridge, “SLAS/EOP and the Cesar Chavez Center was a safe and secure space that always yielded support, encouragement and resources when needed.” Erika earned her BS in American Studies, with emphasis in Health & Education for Minority Youth, and MA in Educational Leadership. She is currently a doctoral student in Educational Leadership at Mills College.

Manuel says,  "I would not have graduated from Cal without the help of the fine people of SLAS/EOP. The entire team was the wind beneath my wings. When I needed help navigating the red tape on campus, they were there; when I needed advice, they were there; and, when I just needed encouragement, they were there. Because they were there for me, I am now able to be there for hundreds of thousands of other people around the world. I inspire people to give their lives to something bigger than themselves, to use all that they are to help someone else. Honestly, whenever I'm looking for an illustration about what a servant-leader looks like, all I need to do is talk about the great people of SLAS/EOP. They are the apotheosis- the perfect embodiment of what true help looks like. From the bottom of my heart, from the depth of my soul, from the very core of my being, I am eternally indebted to them for all they have done. Thank you!" 

Emmett is the chair of the Department of African American Studies and associate professor of music and African American Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, MA.  He received his B.A. in music from University of California, Berkeley in 1996 and both his M.A. and Ph.D. in music (ethnomusicology) from the University of Pittsburgh. Emmett is a former fellow of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University and a current research fellow of Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society, where he serves as the lead scholar on the Rhythm & Flow Initiative - a research project studying the various intersections of music and sport. Emmett is one of the nation's leading experts on African American Music and Culture.  He is the author of HIP HOP Culture (ABC-CLIO, 2006), executive editor of The Encyclopedia of African American Music (Greenwood Press, 2010), and editor of The Black Church, Hip Hop Culture and the Dilemma of the Generational Divide (Scarecrow Press, 2011). An ordained minister, Emmett serves associate minister and minister of music and worship at the Greater Framingham Community Church (Framingham, MA).  He is also the president and founder of the Black Church Music Ministry Project (BCMMP), an organization launched in 2006 to "serve, nurture and develop spiritual leaders in music ministry."

Lloyd is a native of Oakland, California and has lived in the Bay Area all of his life. He is of African-American and Chinese descent and joined the Kaiser Permanente staff in 2002. Dr. Stockey received his undergraduate degree in Integrative Biology at the University of California, at Berkeley, and completed his medical school training at the University of California, San Diego. He completed his residency training at Kaiser Permanente Oakland where Dr. Stockey served as Chief Resident during the 2001-2002 academic year. Dr. Stockey continued on at Kaiser Oakland after his residency. His specialty is Internal Medicine.

Clint graduated from UC Berkeley in 1995.  After briefly working for the UC Outreach Program, Clint moved to Los Angeles and began working in the Advertising Industry.  Over the next 7 years, Clint worked his way up to producing broadcast television commercials. Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, Clint focused his energy within the Asian and Asian American markets, including extended periods of living and working in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Thailand. In 2004, he formed Clinton Otteson Associates, a boutique production company that collaborates with teams of producers and creative directors in China and the United States.  His projects include commercials, reality TV shows, event sponsorships, viral marketing and web integration.

Maribel is General Counsel of the Fontana and El Rancho Unified School Districts as well as the former president of the Mexican-American Bar Association. Born in Mexico, Maribel immigrated to the United States  with her family as a young child and was raised in a farm worker camp in the agricultural town of Watsonville, California. Maribel earned her bachelors degree from Cal in 1991 and was later accepted to UC  Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law and Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government where she earned a JD and MPA, respectively. Prior to her current role, Maribel worked as an Assistant City Attorney for Pasadena and is former Special Counsel to the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Board of Education. During her time as an undergraduate she served as an EOP Peer Advisor and Peer Advisor Coordinator. Prior to her current role, Maribel worked as an Assistant City Attorney for Pasadena and is former Special Counsel to the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Board of Education and General Counsel of the San Francisco Unified School District.

Mia received her undergraduate degree in African American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley in 1990.  As a Cal student she was an ASUC Senator, the Affirmative Action Officer for the ASUC, president of the Berkeley campus chapter of the NAACP, and one of the student founders of the Office of African American Student Development. Following her undergraduate career at Berkeley, Mia obtained a graduate degree in Management and Urban Policy from the Milano New School in New York City, NY.  She also received the Sloan Fellowship while attending Carnegie Mellon University. Mia was the director of the Woodrow Wilson Public Policy and International Affairs (PPIA) Program in the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley from 1996-1999.  She has spent over twenty years studying advocacy and implementing programs designed to meet community needs. Her new book and organizing system, "Navigating Eldercare - Strategies for Seniors and Those who Care for Them" helps simplify important eldercare issues. Mia is a director of the Association of African American Professionals, Inc. and resides in Los Angeles, California with her daughter, Nina.

Angela is a native of the Bay Area and the first in her family to attend college. She received her B.A in Social Welfare and Minor in Education from UC Berkeley in 2009. As a student, she was heavily involved in promoting higher education to youth, especially those growing up in undeserved communities. Her roles included: serving as Probation Intern with the  Alameda County Probation Department; working as an Investing-Pay Off Counselor engaging high school students in policy issues that affect undeserved communities; holding a post as an Administrative Assistant for the Greenlining Institute; and established a Co-op project that allowed she and her classmates to mentor students from her old high school (Media Academy in Oakland, Ca). Angela is currently serving as a contractor at Teracore, Inc. and serving as the Individual & Community Preparedness Officer for Federal Emergency Management Agency Region IX (FEMA) in Oakland, CA. She provides technical assistance to state, territorial, local, and tribal Citizen Corps Councils, Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) programs, Youth Preparedness Council members, and moderates the Region IX discussion board on Ready.gov. Prior to joining Teracore, Inc. and FEMA, she was part of the AmeriCorps Vista Program with the American Red Cross Bay Area Chapter. She served as a Community Partnership Specialist conducting disaster preparedness training and building partnership among various organizations and agencies serving vulnerable populations to integrate emergency preparedness training into their line of services.