Theresa Mendoza: senior advisor, California State University System

Latino Leaders: The National Magazine of the Successful American Latino, April, 2007 by Graeme Stewart

Forty five years ago, a Cuban child fled her island homeland with her family for the United States, not knowing what the future would hold for her in a foreign land. Today, she holds the lofty post of Senior Advisor, Campus Advancement Programs at the California State University Office of the Chancellor.

Only in America? Perhaps, but Theresa Mendoza is living proof that hard work and grim determination can get you places despite the odds.

That little 10-year-old girl who left Cuba in the first wave of refugees in 1962, and her family, could have had no idea what lay ahead of them in the United States.

Forced to leave her father behind in Castro's Socialist state, little Theresa was sent to an aunt, who lived in Massachusetts, and wasn't reunited with him until closer to the end of the decade, when he was allowed to leave Cuba on the happily named "Freedom Flights", the airplanes that helped reunite families disjointed by the revolution on the Caribbean island.

The family then moved to Connecticut, where Theresa enjoyed her High School years and she later enrolled into George Washington University in Washington D.C., where she received an undergraduate degree in international affairs and economics.

She was doing graduate work on health affairs at George Washington when she met a nice young man on his way home to Arizona. That was Ruben, soon to be her husband of 25 years. Once there, she went to work for the Arizona State University, which is where her career in higher education began.

At Arizona State, Theresa served as the Executive Vice President of the Arizona State University Foundation and Campaign Director of ASU's Campaign for Leadership that raised over half a billion dollars. But before making the transition to higher education, she worked in Washington, D.C., on the staffs of three members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, focusing on legislative issues regarding immigration, international trade, and national healthcare.

Nowadays, she serves over 400,000 students in California, from San Diego in the south to Humboldt in the north and, as Senior Advisor at California State University, she works as a strategic partner with the executive leadership of each campus in building successful programs that enhance the university's prestige, builds alumni loyalty and community engagement and procures philanthropic resources that enrich the academic and student learning environments.

For Theresa, her rise in the academic world had not been without certain challenges. "Being a woman, and a Hispanic woman, was not plain sailing. There was no open discrimination, but at the same time there were not many 'persons of color' in top jobs.

"Part of my job is to identify and assess these issues and work around them. That is what a diplomat would do, and I had trained as a diplomat, someone who brings people together. So that is what I did."

And, of course, there was the "Glass Ceiling." Says Theresa: "Because I was married to a banker, I was often viewed as a person who did not need a higher salary. But, thankfully, in big, urban institutions like CSU, people are paid for what they are worth."

Although she has received various awards and recognitions from local and national organizations, most recently, the San Diego YWCA Tribute to Women in Industry and the California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Women of Distinction, Theresa still remembers her childhood and knows how difficult it can be for a young Latina making her way in the United States.

"I often find myself in the position of giving advice, gladly, to young Latinas. I tell them this: really look at the wide world and the opportunities that there are out there for you.

"We all feel responsibilities to our families, but don't let that prohibit you from making your mark in the world. For instance, I knew a young woman who was being recruited by the ClA, but she had lots of doubts because it would have meant leaving her family home. I almost literally had to put her on an airplane!

"I told her that while she may feel that she was abandoning her parents, on her return she would see them bursting with pride in her achievements and that was what she had to concentrate on--making her family proud."

That is something that Theresa has done every step of the way from when she left her native Cuba as a 10-year-old all those years ago.