Hi, there, and welcome. I’m a Filipino-Canadian author and educator born and raised in Toronto. I hold a PhD in Education from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Between 2016 and 2023, I served as Associate Chancellor and Chief of Staff at the University of California, Riverside (UCR). During this period, the university grew in nearly every aspect of institutional performance – student enrollment, graduation rates, number and diversity of tenure-track faculty, research productivity, and fundraising. In recognition of these efforts, the university ranked #1 in social mobility in U.S. News and World Report, jumped up 39 places in the national rankings overall, and joined the Association of American Universities (AAU) – a group of 71 leading public and private research universities across North America.
At the same time, however, the university attended to an extraordinary number of crises – all of which fell into my portfolio as the university’s Chief of Staff. Sexual harassment involving the Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, a vote of no-confidence in the Provost, the Chancellor’s connection to Michigan State University’s sexual assault scandal involving Larry Nassar and the U.S. gymnastics team, the onset of the COVID pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests calling for the abolition of campus police, and the largest graduate student labor strike in the history of U.S. higher education. Over time, work took its toll, and I decided to step away.
I’ve spent the past few years teaching and for the most part, reacquainting myself with life outside the confines of the academy. I’ve taken long walks around the neighborhood, traveled to the Maldives and Uganda, and enjoyed summer in Twillingate, Newfoundland. I read, I knit, I lollygag. I observe and engage with trees — in nature, literature, and art. Along the way, I wrote my first book of non-fiction, City of Trees and PhDs: An ecological framework for higher education and beyond (University of Toronto Press). I’m hopeful for its release in 2027.
I presently live in New York City with my husband Chris Clark, a professor at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. Our daughters, Talula and Sequoia, attend NYU, and our son Jaden is a PhD student at Stanford. We have two dogs, Jasper and Miso.
