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Workshop Speakers – Leveraging Past Learning to Close Present-Day Equity Gaps

As Executive Director, Su Jin leads California Competes’s work to develop nonpartisan and financially pragmatic recommendations for improved higher education and workforce policies and practices across California. Prior to joining California Competes, she served as Associate Professor of Public Policy and Administration at California State University, Sacramento. She also served as the Director of the CSU Student Success Network, Academic Advisor for the California Executive Fellows Program, and Associate Director of the Sacramento State Doctorate in Educational Leadership. Su Jin is an accomplished researcher whose work appears in a variety of publications including Teachers College Record, Education Policy Analysis Archives, Research in Higher Education, Community College Review, and Michigan Journal of Race & Law. Through her applied research, she has provided guidance to the California Community College Chancellor’s Office, the California State University system, and California’s Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education. Su Jin led a large scale study of the CCCCO’s Economic and Workforce Development Program and coauthored multiple reports analyzing the role of the California Community Colleges Career Technical Education in the college completion agenda. She has presented across the country and internationally on key issues in higher education and systems change, including economic and workforce development, college readiness and success, student college choice and decision making, and institutional effectiveness. She holds a PhD in education administration and policy analysis and an MA in economics from Stanford University. She received a BA in statistics and a minor in public policy from the University of California, Berkeley.

As Executive Director, Salih leads our staff team and organizational strategy, keeps the UCSA office in operation, supports the Board and other student leaders, and fundraises to maximize the potential of our organization. Salih also oversees planning for UCSA’s annual statewide conferences.

 

Raised in Oakland, California, Salih Muhammad strives to embody the principles of service, sacrifice, and selflessness. For much of his life, he has been committed to living toward the liberation of Black people, at home and abroad.

 

In 2009, he continued the pursuit of knowledge at the University of California, Berkeley, where he excelled as a Black student and organizer on campus. His favorite quote is from Franz Fanon, who stated, “Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity.”