Jerlena Griffin-Desta, Ph.D., is the new Chief of Staff and VP of Strategic Initiatives and Diversity at Sonoma State University. She has been in the position for over two weeks now and could not be any more thrilled for what she has to offer for the growth and success of Sonoma State.  

The Chief of Staff position ensures that the president and cabinets’ agenda gets implemented and advanced at Sonoma State. Griffin-Desta wants to be able to create a climate that works for everybody and is welcoming and inclusive. 

“I’ve been asked to come in and look at all of what we are currently doing to make sure we’re kind of moving in the direction we want to move to realize our goals around this,” she said. 

Her role as VP of Strategic Initiatives and Diversity does not mean that she is the only one who is in charge of diversity at Sonoma State, and that the chief of diversity is the catalyst to help everyone else do what they need to do in the spirit of the Seawolf values. “I’m not responsible for diversity on this campus,” she said. “Everybody is, right?” 

Furthermore, she said that resources are needed to help improve student affairs and diversity. Rather than seeing a mission statement, she wants to know the budget priorities. Subsequently, the limited amount of resources and funding Sonoma State has can be due to the fact that the university has a reliance on state dollars, and the university budgets that come from the state have been constantly shrinking, while enrollment has been increasing. 

“I don’t think that money is the punitive answer to everything either, right?” she said. “It’s not just like, ‘We need more money.’ We need better thinking and better creativity about how to get what we need.”

Her interests in the veteran and foster-youth experiences of students at Sonoma State hope to also contribute to a more diverse community on campus. She said that the surrounding community at Sonoma State will hopefully attract more students from different ethnic, socioeconomic, racial, and cultural backgrounds.

Griffin-Desta, having received a Master’s degree and Ph. D. at the University of California, Berkeley in the Graduate School of Education in higher education policy. 

She was appointed her position at Sonoma State by President Judy Sakaki and started officially on Jan. 28.

Apart from attending graduate school, she worked at UC Berkeley in student affairs and student life. “I wanted a research lens of which to kind of look at some of the issues that were interesting to me that I saw unfolding. Not just on the Berkeley campus, but throughout the country in terms of student issues,” she said. 

Griffin-Desta spent seven years at UCLA working in student services and student support, while also spending 13 years at Berkeley, previously working at the University of California Office of the President before stepping into her role at Sonoma State. 

This is her first time working for the California State University system, since all of her previous experience has been at the UC system for over 20 years. 

Her scholarly interests in policy and higher education led her to be a fellow of the American Council of Education last year, doing her work at the University of Washington, Seattle, where she was interested in their governance arrangements. 

When she was in high school, she was active in the Future Business Leaders of America and went to San Francisco for the first time when she was 16, never having been on an airplane before. It was only then that she was captivated by the culture and experiences of what San Francisco and the Bay Area had to offer. 

“I looked and saw people and I’m like, ‘Am I still in America?’ I mean, it just blew my mind. It was just such an awakening,” she said. 

Years later, she was granted the opportunity to work at the University of San Francisco for a residential housing position and ultimately stayed there for two years in the late 1980s. Her experiences with the school, community service outreach, and the smallness of the campus would eventually pull her back into the Bay Area years later. 

Griffin-Desta, having already had 30 years of experience, would like to eventually retire after her time at Sonoma State. She would like to pursue projects in higher education, such as consulting and public speaking. She also hopes to live abroad since she has been to all of the continents, except for Antarctica, which is on her list. 

She hopes to do what she calls a “four, four, and four,” meaning that she wants to spend four months in Georgia with her family, four months traveling, and four months in the bay area. 

Before then, though, she hopes for continued academic excellence at Sonoma State and, in the end, to make it an accessible place for the community. 

“We are a top regional institution,” she said. “I do think it’s a gem, but often times I feel like it’s a hidden gem. And I kind of want us to polish it a little bit and be like, ‘Bam!’ You know? We’re about Sonoma.”