Staff Changes at Just Communities & Job Opening

A Promotion for Maria Zamudio

As of July 1st, Maria Zamudio, previously Just Communities’ Office Manager, was promoted to Project Specialist. In this role, Maria will coordinate a variety of Just Communities efforts including newsletters, fundraising events, and programs. In addition, she will oversee Just Communities’ continued evolution into a fully bilingual organization by ensuring our programs, materials, events, and organizational culture are fully accessible to both Spanish and English speakers throughout the Central Coast. This is an exciting area of growth for Just Communities and we can’t think of anyone we’d rather have lead us into this new way of being. Maria first got involved with Just Communities as a participant in our CommUnity Leadership Institute while she was in high school in 2004. She has served as a volunteer and facilitator in a range of Just Communities’ programs and joined our staff in 2008. She has been instrumental in supporting the programmatic and fund development work of Just Communities over the last several years and is poised to take us to new heights in her new role. You can congratulate Maria and offer to get involved in our development and bilingual efforts by emailing her at mzamudio@justcommunitiescc.org.

A Transition for Raquel Bernaldo

After 3 years on staff and 9 years of involvement with Just Communities, Raquel Bernaldo will be moving on to the next stage in her life/career. By the end of August, Raquel will be leaving the Just Communities staff to move to Los Angeles to be with her partner and to focus on graduate school.

Raquel has been instrumental in the growth and development of Just Communities. She was a participant in the very first youth program we offered after opening our office in 2001. She remained a program participant, volunteer, founding board member, and facilitator through high school and college. We were so lucky to hire her when she graduated college in 2007.

In the time she has been with us, Raquel has staffed pretty much every program Just Communities offers and has served as a powerful and inspiring ally, role model, teacher and mentor to all she works with. In the last several years, Raquel has focused her leadership on the Community Leadership Institute (CLI), the CLI CAN DO follow-up program, and the community-based Toward Justice program taking each to new levels of depth and impact. Most recently, she co-designed and co-directed our first ever Just Act! training on facilitation and organizing skills for social justice.

It is with both sadness for our organization and community’s loss and excitement for Raquel in this new stage of her life that I ask you to join me in wishing her all the success in the world as she moves to Los Angeles. If you would like to send Raquel a note of congratulations, please contact her directly at rbernaldo@justcommunitiescc.org. She is also looking for work in Los Angeles for the year between now and grad school, so if you have any contacts or know of opportunities, I’m sure she would love to hear from you.

Raquel has already told us that she hopes to continue her involvement with Just Communities from afar, so we look forward to having her back as a volunteer and contract staff person as her schedule and the distance allows.

Though there is no way to replace Raquel, we are left with the task of finding someone to transition into the role she will be leaving. Attached, please find a job description for a new Program Manager for Youth & Community Programs position. We encourage you to share this description with your networks or to consider applying yourself if the position looks exciting to you.

[If you have any questions or would like to get further involved in our work, please feel free to contact me, Jarrod Schwartz at jschwartz@justcommunitiescc.org or 805.966.2063.]