Name: Michael Annas

Title: Building Engineer

Department/unit: Building & Administrative Service Center

Location: 415 20th St. (aka the Oakland Scientific Facility or OSF)

When I started working at UCOP: July 9, 2012

What I do for UCOP in five words or less: Anything building related . . . maintenance & service

The best part about working for OP: I haven’t found a bad part yet. I enjoy the challenges of every day, be it a service call for someone being too hot or cold, changing light bulbs, unclogging toilets or scheduling vendors to perform maintenance. I get to work not only at the 20th Street building but at Kaiser as well, keeping the UCOP employees smiling day in and day out.

Something you don’t know about me: I am an avid outdoors man. I love to be in the mountains hiking, snowshoeing and snowboarding with my fiancee and Bernese Mountain dogs. I enjoy gardening and raising organic chickens as well.

One weird fact about the town I grew up in: Walnut Creek is headquarters for the PAC-12 Conference (Pacific 12 College Athletic Conference). It seemed like such a small town with nothing much to do when I was a kid; now it is one of the busiest little shopping centers in the East Bay.

If I could have any job in the world (besides the one I have now): I would love to own a hardware store in a rural town. I enjoy helping others accomplish their “honey-do” lists and would get to play with all sorts of tools and outdoor equipment.

She has worked for UCOP under six different UC presidents, and the tasks and tools of her trade have evolved significantly over the past 33 years.

For her contributions in the field of financial aid, Coolidge on Feb. 22 received the Joe Allen Exemplar Award from the College Board, a national educational association that promotes broader college participation on its non-profit side and sells various student aptitude and achievement tests and administrative tools to finance this enterprise.

“It was so gratifying to be honored in the memory of Joe Allen,” Coolidge said of the award, named for the late College Board trustee and university administrator. “He was very much beloved, and I was an admirer because of the wonderful things he did in terms of outreach and admissions for UC Santa Cruz, when it was our youngest campus.”

Coolidge’s work involves analyzing and working with legislation, policies and regulations to find ways to better support students and their families. Her efforts have included the “year-round” Pell Grant that helped finance low-income students who attend college full-time all year around. While Congress recently eliminated this additional Pell Grant for fiscal reasons, many UC students benefited from it earlier, particularly when the economy made it hard to find work in between academic years.

Another change that Coolidge advocated for was income-based repayment, which allows low-income borrowers to repay school loans based on their income rather than on the amount borrowed (which is still in effect).

Quick to share credit with her colleagues, Coolidge said the legislative analyses they perform benefit not just UC, but also students at 6,000 other U.S. institutions — from community colleges to research universities — that participate in the federal student financial aid program through Title IV of the Higher Education Act.

She speaks with amusement of her early UC days before email and computers, when she used yellow legal pads and IBM Selectric typewriters. But what she misses most is the strong national voice UC had during what she calls the “golden era” of higher education, at least in California, based on the state’s Master Plan for Higher Education.

“Congress and the state legislature have changed in many respects,” Coolidge said. “UC  was often out in front on educational policy.” In her UC role, for example, she served on the 1993 Clinton–Gore transition team, traveling to Washington to weigh in with the new administration’s key staffers on college student financial support issues.

Most change to government programs occurs incrementally, she said, and education is just one voice in what is viewed as a sea of complex “special interests.” Coolidge continues to work with UC’s offices in Washington and Sacramento to make sure UC’s concerns are heard.

Keep an eye out for Coolidge’s upcoming talk in May on Education Loan Repayment Tips, one of several financial support brown bags she gives at UCOP every year.

Julie Henderson, who has worked with Gov. Jerry Brown since 2008, joins UCOP this week as chief of staff and senior policy advisor in the Office of External Relations, reporting to Senior Vice President Dan Dooley. She replaces Brad Hayward, who left UCOP last fall.

An attorney who started her career at law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, Henderson since 2011 has served as a senior advisor to Gov. Brown on education, health and human services, and public pension policy issues.

Through the governor’s office, she had the opportunity to work with SVP Dooley, Executive Vice President Nathan Brostrom, Provost Aimee Dorr and other OP leadership on higher education issues of interest to the governor. She said she looks forward to her new role, working directly within education to address issues like declining funding, maintaining tuition levels and online education.

“UC is such a revered institution, but it is now under so many pressures,” Henderson said. “I’m very excited to have the opportunity to work inside the university to help meet these challenges.”

Henderson served as a special assistant attorney general from 2008 to 2010, when Brown was attorney general. In that role she acted as liaison to the deputy attorneys general, specifically in the areas of consumer protection, pension abuses, conflicts of interest and board governance, prison health care and criminal appeals.

In 2010, she worked on a small team of staff helping to transition Governor-elect Brown into office. Priorities included identifying critical policy issues, interviewing and making recommendations for candidates for key appointments and helping to build the governor’s office staff.

Prior to her public service, Henderson also worked for GAP Inc. in various roles, including as a vice president and associate general counsel. She holds a J.D. from Santa Clara University and a B.A. in government from the University of Notre Dame.

Henderson is located in 12302 Franklin and can be reached at 510-987-9195 or julie.henderson@ucop.edu.

She joined Alpha Phi to help get her through a rough patch as a sophomore at UC Irvine, and the chapter house and sisterhood soon became her home away from home.

Evelyn Cheng, now an analyst in UCOP’s Office of Ethics, Compliance and Audit Services (ECAS), has maintained her connection with Alpha Phi sorority by volunteering for the past three years as an advisor for the UC Berkeley chapter. Those efforts were recognized last month when she received the 2012 Outstanding Chapter Advisor Award, given every other year to the top advisor from 157 Alpha Phi collegiate chapters throughout the U.S. and Canada.

“I never thought I would be in a sorority,” Cheng said, “but when I joined, the older members helped me so much with prioritizing, time management and organizing my class schedule and professors.” She also learned a lot about loyalty and listening, she said, and came to value the history and legacy behind the sorority: Alpha Phi was founded at Syracuse University in 1872 by 10 women pioneering alongside male classmates for their higher education rights.

Cheng’s positive, can-do attitude is well suited to her analyst work at UCOP, according to Claudia White, special assistant to the ECAS senior vice president and Cheng’s supervisor. Since joining the staff one year ago, White said, Cheng has been a great addition to the office, where work is often done in teams.

“Evelyn is a real team player,” White said. “She is always quick to raise her hand and get involved, so you can see why she’s so successful at Alpha Phi.” At OP Cheng is now heavily immersed in collecting data for the 2011–12 Ethics and Compliance Annual Report, which summarizes campus activities in safety, data privacy, investigations, research compliance, whistleblower reports and other areas.

With her degree in sociology and education, she still harbors hopes of finding a career as a high school counselor, but for now plans to continue with Alpha Phi until she “runs out of juice.” What she calls her second job involves up to 10 hours a week of meetings, phone calls, visits to the chapter house at 2830 Bancroft Steps, screening new recruits in the fall and serving as a big sister to about 130 young women each year.

“You can imagine there’s plenty of excitement,” Cheng said. “But Berkeley is a great school, and these young women are great, too. I help them, they help me, and it’s a great way to experience UC.”