Personal Statement

My leadership strengths are keeping projects on track, seeking out innovative solutions to process issues, relationship building within a unit and across an organization, presenting information confidently, and training people using multiple approaches.

My leadership strengths are organizing projects and teamwork, staying attuned to project schedules, analyzing and selecting the best course of action, and communicating with inclusivity as a primary goal. 

A leadership weakness of mine is performance management. I much prefer when people are clear about their tasks rather than me having to give them a lot of direction.

A unique strength of mine is innovation. I enjoy recognizing a need, communicating that need, and coming up with solutions. I am not afraid to veer from what has always been done. Throughout my career, I have learned the best way to innovate is to take incremental steps and build rapport around the proposed changes.  Delegation of tasks, even when it is something I find satisfaction in, is also key.

Another considerable strength of mine is allowing people to be emotional. Productivity increases, and teams strengthen when people can show up to work as their whole selves. I am sensitive to people's emotions in the workplace. I want people to know they can be emotional and have the flexibility to attend to self-care needs. On the flip side, I am also responsive to feedback; I accept when I am part of the problem and adjust my leadership based on cues and feedback.

I recognize that all things will be perfect right away. People will be looking at me, wondering if I am trustworthy; they will be evaluating me as I will be learning who the key players are, job details, and settling in. I accept that some things take time.

People-pleasing is a habit of mine. It is helpful when serving the needs of students, teams, and superiors. However, it leads to a slow progression of identifying top priorities and when it is appropriate to shuffle what is most urgent. Since I have this awareness, I am constantly considering whether people-pleasing is getting in the way of sound judgment.

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I have worked in higher ed for nearly six years and social services for another six years. Before college, my first job was assisting with HUD management and evaluation, delivering program objectives, and collecting the data side of things. After my bachelor's degree, my first job was helping with HRSA and county grant reporting and developing new policies, and communicating these policies to staff during a time of massive growth. Our finance team contracted to only me for some time and then grew to a group of four.

I am in grad school for global leadership and strategic communication. I have also participated in the diversity, equity, and inclusion program at UCSC. I also guide faculty on how to prepare contributions to diversity statements and call attention to issues of equity and inclusion to faculty when it makes sense to do so.

As a community college student myself, with the first in a couple of generations to finish high school, let alone enter higher education, I am susceptible to the needs of economically disadvantaged students and passionate about their success. Having grown up in school systems with predominantly Hispanic and Native American populations, I support ethnic backgrounds that are unlike my own.

Another thought I have on this question is that community college is collegial, professional, collaborative, bureaucratic, and participatory in decision-making processes. Further, there is a positive reliance on sound research and best practices when making decisions. Although I already have nearly six years of experience in a higher educational setting, much of that time involved grant development, grant budgeting, and grant writing. Another aspect of grants is that they are very process-oriented and participatory. The grant life-cycle is a group effort. Many people are involved in executing it in total, all the while following the funder's guidelines. The communicative skills needed to thrive in a higher educational setting transfer well to managing grants.

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I had an intern who was struggling with mental health and being a person of color. I worked with her to develop a new environment she could conduct work in, listened to her feedback about being stigmatized by staff in the department, and gave her the latitude to express her cultural heritage in her work.

I made a mistake and broadcasted that I wanted diverse ethnicities in photos I was taking of our department, and I learned that mistake.

Through dealing with a black professional and administrative colleague, I have learned to be much more sensitive to that population's needs and not make them feel as though I expect an apology since I am Caucasian. Although I have an authentic offense to something a colleague did, I have learned more significant, more systemic issues at play after interacting with this person. In many instances, it makes sense to talk to someone directly and confidentially. In dealing with people directly affected by systemic racism, it makes much more sense to broad-stroke the message and not direct it to any one person.

I have reported discriminatory practices that people in power take that I've seen hurt a student or colleague of color their self-esteem.

I have advised faculty of better ways to write job descriptions to attract more women and people of color based on best practices.

In my current role, we have many postdoctoral students and international scholars from other countries, often very anxious about their visas. I take care to communicate with them quickly and respect their anxiety as a product of a) uncertainty of the process and b) desire for a better economic opportunity. I am currently working with our international scholar services office to ensure they are getting the onboarding support they need when they come to campus. I am also developing a process within our department to connect these scholars with faculty and peers.