A Slice of Orange
Season 2
David Gillanders Jr., Executive Director of Pathways of Hope
Kara Regan, President and Founder of Amazingly Complicated Prison Outreach
Season 1
by Jodi Balma
David Gillanders, Jr is the Executive Director of Pathways of Hope. David is a graduate of Fullerton College, California State University Fullerton (where, along with University of California Irvine, he continues to give back through teaching), and holds a Master of Science from DePaul University. Previous work includes various program and agency leadership roles, including working at Orange County United Way managing investments into anti-poverty programs.
Kara Regan is a passionate social justice fighter. She began her journey of education and experience working in the prison system by working on 3 degrees in Administration of Justice, Psychology and Social Sciences where she studied crime in a socioeconomic, sociocultural and sociological perspective. She uses public platform to bring awareness toward discrimination in the justice system through presentations of research and her experience about prison reform and advocating for public action. She is currently working on degrees in psychological sciences and criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine. Feeling restricted at the previous prison outreach organization she worked with, she left to create the Amazingly Complicated Prison Outreach (ACPO) nonprofit organization where she can continue fighting for prisoners on a larger scale by focusing on education for prisoners with a highly educated team in the relevance of education, law, society, crime and psychology.
Jodi is joined by CSUF professor Dr. Matt Jarvis whose research focuses on, among other issues, redistricting.
Jodi got the chance to chat with Christian Esteban, Executive Director of the JOYA Scholars program. The program aims to inspire and prepare students from families of low-income communities in Fullerton to succeed through higher education. By supporting students through one-on-one mentoring, academic tutoring, educational workshops, parent academy, campus visits, SAT prep, JOYA Scholars come alongside junior high and high school students to fill a relational and knowledgeable gap for students and their families for whom the school can be a confusing and intimidating process to navigate.
Jodi got the chance to speak with Christian Esteban, the current Executive Director of the JOYA Scholars program. The program's mission is to inspire and prepare students from families of low-income communities in Fullerton to succeed through higher education. When JOYA Scholars began in 2009, not a single high school student from the Garnet neighborhood in Fullerton, CA - aside from Valeria Sosa who became Garnet’s first college graduate in 2014 - was eligible for a four-year university. Today, there are students enrolled at the University of California Irvine, University of California Riverside, and California State University Fullerton. Even more students from the program attend local colleges planning to transfer to four-year universities.
Jodi welcomed Irvine's Vice Mayor, Tammy Kim, to the podcast, to discuss her historic election to the City Council and to reflect on AAPI Heritage Month as an immigrant from Korea. Vice Mayor Tammy Kim was elected to City Council in November 2020 in a historic win beating out thirteen other candidates to take first place., with more than 43,700 votes, the highest vote count for any City Council candidate in the city’s history. Tammy is a mother, a nonprofit leader, educator, community advocate, small business owner and former corporate executive.
Jodi is joined by Vincent Tran, Community Engagement Coordinator, VietRISE. Vincent is a community organizer, a second-generation Vietnamese American, and a lifelong resident of Orange County. As Community Engagement Coordinator for VietRISE, he helps organize Vietnamese residents to defend immigrant rights and housing rights. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, he served as a member of the COVID-19 Community Response team and led a team of Census field staff that contacted and assisted over 5,000 Vietnamese residents to complete the 2020 Census.
Gavin Kane a Member of the Orange County LGBTQ Center Board of Directors. An Orange County native, Gavin is currently working at California State University, Fullerton for the Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs. He started at Fullerton College, transferred to UCLA graduating summa cum laude, and is now pursuing graduate studies at California State University, Fullerton. Jodi got a chance to connect with Gavin to discuss his higher education journey and path to serving his local community through board membership.
Dr. Shana Alex Charles is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Health at Cal State Fullerton. She worked as Director of Health Insurance Studies and nine years as a Senior Research Associate at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. Dr. Charles's research focuses on expansions of health insurance and its impact on access to care, and underinsurance among those with coverage. She also specializes in political issues surrounding health care reform at both the state and the national levels. Dr. Charles is also an active member of the California Health Benefits Review Program faculty task force, which analyzes the impacts of proposed health insurance benefit mandates for the California state legislature. Jodi spoke with Dr. Charles to talk about all things COVID-19 pandemic and our local, state, and federal government decisions.
Zoot Velasco is Director of the Gianneschi Center for Nonprofit Research at California State University Fullerton’s Mihaylo College of Business & Economics. There, he hosts the Gianneschi Fellowship in Social Impact Leadership, G3X programs, the popular 501(c)3(b)(s) podcast, research projects, and coaches organizations from Victorville to San Pedro. He is a professor of Business and Marketing at Mihaylo College as well as Nonprofit Management and Leadership at California Polytechnic Institute, Pomona. Zoot has authored two books: The First Hundred Days: Leading Small non-Profits Out of The Wilderness (Amazon Press) and The History of the Muckenthaler Cultural Center (Arcadia Press). He is a registered historical scholar with the California Humanities Council where he produced two oral history projects. His live event productions include a TEDx conference, major arts events, and community events. Zoot holds a BA in dance from St. Mary’s College of California, an MBA in nonprofit management from Hope International University.