Staff

Reynalda Montenegro was born and raised in Oakland, CA. She graduated from UC Berkeley in 2023 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology and a minor in Education. During her time at Berkeley, Reynalda discovered her passion for advocating and supporting first-generation students, like herself, in accessing the resources they need to succeed. After graduating, she became a college advisor with UC Berkeley’s Destination College Advising Corps and Early Academic Outreach Program (DCAC/EAOP), continuing her commitment to serving her community. Now, as a Program Coordinator, Reynalda is...

Ruby was born in Jalisco, Mexico. When she was 10 years old, she immigrated with her family to Tulare, a town in the Central Valley of California. In 2019, she graduated valedictorian from Tulare Western High School and then began her studies at UC Berkeley, where she double majored in Psychology and Spanish Literature. She first got involved in college-access work during her undergraduate studies through an organization called Matriculate. Then, in my senior year, she learned about EBC and started working as a college advisor.

Sumi was born in Oakland and raised in Richmond and finds passion and strength in her family’s resilience and history; her father grew up sharecropping in Louisiana during the 1930s and her grandparents were sent to internment camps during World War II. She attended K-12 public schools in Richmond and received her B.A. in Black Studies and Global Peace and Security from UC Santa Barbara and a Master’s in Bilingual Multicultural Education from Sacramento State University. She is passionate about educational justice and is committed to making higher education a reality for low-income,...

Tanzania is from East Oakland, CA. She moved to Portland, OR, where she received her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Lewis and Clark College on a full-ride academic scholarship. In college, Tanzania was a member of the Black Student Union for four years, and of those four years, she was the Black Student Union’s president for one year. While in Portland, she volunteered at high schools in the Portland Metro Area. She realized that her calling was helping low-income students of color get into college during her volunteer work and being a product of a college access program. She saw many...