Charlie Robinson, Marie-Ann Hairston and Günther Waibel

This Friday, Sept. 15 from 1 – 2 p.m. (PT), tune into the latest session of Leading Toward Equity!

During this live virtual event, UCOP leaders will share unvarnished truths about their personal experiences with equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI), their journeys of learning in this space and how they are leading efforts to further EDI and anti-racism efforts at UCOP.

This event will feature:

• Marie-Ann Hairston, interim associate vice president, Systemwide Human Resources Strategy & Staff Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging (EDIB)
• Charles Robinson, general counsel and senior vice president, Legal Affairs
• Günter Waibel, associate vice provost and executive director at the California Digital Library (CDL) — Moderator

Staff participation is encouraged! You can participate through the Zoom chat feature and by asking questions during the second half of the session.

Join us

• What: Leading Toward Equity
• When: Sept. 15, 1 – 2 p.m. (PT)
• Zoom: https://ucop.zoom.us/j/3967131838

About Leading Toward Equity

The Leading Toward Equity series — which is presented in partnership between UCOP’s Office of Workplace Inclusion & Belonging and Internal Communications — features unscripted conversations with UCOP leaders on EDI, and our efforts toward becoming an anti-racist organization.

Leading Toward Equity conversations present a unique opportunity for UCOP staff to hear from our leaders while reflecting on our own experiences of discrimination, bias and privilege based on race, economic class or other dimensions. We encourage staff to attend with the mindset of engaging with colleagues to think through how we can commit to shared accountability, move toward becoming an anti-racist organization and strengthen a culture of equity, diversity and inclusion at UCOP.

About our panelists

Marie Hairston is associate vice president of Systemwide HR Strategy and Staff EDIB — a new unit comprised of HR policy, systemwide workforce planning and development, staff EDIB and executive recruitment. The focus is to partner with UC locations on strategies, initiatives, programing and policy that support a healthy, equitable and inclusive workplace.

Marie has nearly 30 years of experience in human resources — 18 of which have been with the UC system. She began at UC Berkeley as the director of University Health Services Human Resources. She then moved to UC Law SF, where she served as executive director of Human Resources for eight years. She has also provided HR leadership and expertise to various nonprofits throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

Marie has a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a master’s degree in management with an emphasis on leadership development and organizational change from JFK University, as well as certificates in proactive leadership in higher education and collective bargaining studies from Cornell University. She is certified as a senior professional in human resources by the HR Certification Institute.

Charlie Robinson is general counsel and senior vice president, Legal Affairs. Since 2006, he has served as UC’s chief legal officer, providing advice and counsel to the Board of Regents, president, chancellors and other senior university officials. He oversees a systemwide legal department of approximately 140 attorneys and 90 support and operational staff.

Prior to joining UC, Charlie served as vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary for the California Independent System Operator Corporation, where he oversaw the government affairs and market analysis departments, in addition to the legal department. Prior to that, he served as assistant general counsel for litigation for Packard Bell NEC in Sacramento; as division counsel for the Raychem Corporation; and as a litigation partner at the law firm Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe in San Francisco.

Charlie served three years as a National Association of College and University Attorneys (NACUA) Board Member and is currently chair of the Legal Committee for the Association of American Universities (AAU). He holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a Juris Doctorate from Yale University.

Günter Waibel is associate vice provost and executive director of the CDL. One of the world’s largest digital libraries, CDL provides transformative digital library services, grounded in campus partnerships and extended through external collaborations, that amplify the impact of UC’s libraries, scholarship and resources.

Günter is a member of UC’s Council of University Librarians and regularly engages with systemwide governance, as well as administrative and faculty committees to advance library issues. He co-directs UC’s Office of Scholarly Communications and is a member of UC’s publisher negotiations team for transformative open access agreements.

Prior to joining UC, Günter served as director of the Digitization Program Office at the Smithsonian Institution, where he oversaw the strategic plan for creating a digital Smithsonian out of the institution’s 19 museums and 9 research centers. Before that, Günter promoted network-based solutions on behalf of an international collaborative of 140 research libraries as program officer for the Research Libraries Group and the OCLC Research Library Partnership. He has also worked at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the Oakland Museum of California, and the digital library certificate program for Syracuse University School of Information Studies.

Günter has a master’s degree in English literature from Georgetown University.

Check out the first Leading Toward Equity sessions

Session 2: Rachael Nava, Paul Williams and Shirley Bittlingmeier

The May 10 session featured Rachael Nava, executive vice president and chief operating officer and Paul Williams, associate vice president and chief procurement officer. The session was moderated by Shirley Bittlingmeier, executive director, IT Client Services, Information Technology Services.

Watch the May session recording or read the May session summary in Link

Session 1: Pamela Brown, Van Williams and Andenet Emiru

The Feb. 15 session featured Pamela Brown, vice president of Institutional Research and Academic Planning, and Van Williams, vice president of Information Technology Services and chief information officer for UC. The session was moderated by Andenet Emiru, director of external partnerships and projects at the Center for Data-driven Insights and Innovation.

Watch the February session recording or read the February session summary in Link

For questions, please contact Lalitha.Sankaran@ucop.edu or Michelle.Simms@ucop.edu.

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