Matsui Center Cal-in-Sacramento Fellows

Cindy Nguyen

Class of 2022
2022 Cal-in-Sacramento
2022 Diversity & Entrepreneurship Fellow
Placement: Placement Location: Sacramento, California

Cindy Nguyen is a first-generation Vietnamese-American studying Social Welfare and double minoring in Public Policy and Global Poverty & Practice (GPP). Her career interests include strengthening the social safety net to ensure that families and individuals have access to their basic needs. She plans to earn a Master’s degree in Social Work or Public Policy, with ambitions of working in the public sector to advocate for underrepresented and marginalized communities.

Cindy is involved...

Ayline Ruelas

Class of 2022
2022 Cal-in-Sacramento
2022 Diversity & Entrepreneurship Fellow
Placement: Placement Location: Sacramento, California

Ayline Ruelas is a 22-year-old first generation college student. She grew up watching both her parents having multiple jobs to make ends meet. It wasn’t until she decided to take advantage of her education at community college despite feeling uncertain and lost whether education was the right path for her. She realized a common denominator with first generation-low-income students like herself, not having the ability to succeed at the same rate as other students. In effort to challenge these...

Alexis Aguilar

Class of 2022
2022 Cal-in-Sacramento
2022 Diversity & Entrepreneurship Fellow
Placement: Placement Location: Sacramento, California

My name is Alexis Aguilar, I am a fourth studying Conservation and Resource studies. At the age of seven years old, my mother and I fled our hometown in Michoacán, Mexico, escaping a life flustered by organized crime and violence. Throughout the course of my life, I’ve used these experiences to frame the mantra I live by; no matter what happens, never let it affect your education. As I navigate my undergraduate career at UC Berkeley, I proceed to valorize this notion while I forge my own path...

Tristan Muir Keene

Class of 2024
2023 Cal-in-Sacramento
2023 Diversity & Entrepreneurship Fellow

Born and raised in the East Bay Area, Tristan Keene is the result of numerous public sector efforts to better her community, state, and country. AB 19 allowed her to attend community college for two years tuition-free, providing an inclusive and accessible educational setting that prepared her for the rigorous academic environment of UC Berkeley. The Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 lightened the financial burden of being an independent college student by providing her and other students with grocery money every month. The Middle Income Student Assistance Act of 1978, which created the...

Vivian Vu

Class of 2024
2023 Cal-in-Sacramento
2023 Diversity & Entrepreneurship Fellow

Vivian Vu is a junior-level student hoping to receive her degree in economics at UC Berkeley. As the child of two Vietnamese immigrants, Vivian was born and raised in Orange County where she developed her interests in both public policy and economics. This was fostered through her education where she obtained her associates degree in both social and behavioral sciences and liberal arts at Irvine Valley College, in which she earned simultaneously with her diploma.

In addition, her passion for politics originate from witnessing the discrimination and the extra obstacles that her...

Sofia Marie Greenwald

Class of 2024
2023 Cal-in-Sacramento
2023 Diversity & Entrepreneurship Fellow
2023 Schaeffer Fellowship

As the daughter of an immigrant mother and growing up 15 minutes away from the Southern border, Sofia’s upbringing included two very different languages and cultures. It is because of those unique experiences and interactions that she has always had a deep interest and understanding in the uplifting of her Latine community through policy and the field of law. Her personal experiences with challenges accessing professional opportunities and facing workplace discrimination, due to her background, further inform and inspire her undergraduate efforts. She works to increase access to...

Molly Jordan Jacoby

Class of 2023
2023 Cal-in-Sacramento
2023 Diversity & Entrepreneurship Fellow

Molly is a fourth-year student majoring in Sociology with a concentration in research methods and minoring in Journalism. Throughout her adolescent years, Molly felt confined by the close-mindedness of those in power in her hometown, and she created a goal to institute substantial societal change so that future generations would have the opportunity to feel heard and to express themselves freely. In her time at UC Berkeley, Molly has participated in two research apprenticeships with the Sociology and Political Science departments, in which she has studied the impacts of COVID-19 on...

Kristel Cosio

Class of 2023
2023 Cal-in-Sacramento
2023 Diversity & Entrepreneurship Fellow

Kristel’s interest in medicine began as a child when her father's rare genetic disease caused blindness. His diagnosis of Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) ignited her passion for understanding the unseen world, how small life forms impact our daily lives. At UC Berkeley’s Herbert Wertheim’s School of Optometry and Vision Science Kristel is able to work at the Puthussery & Taylor Lab where she is a research assistant on leading therapeutics for RP.

As a senior she helps run the Outreach Taskforce, an umbrella under UC Berkeley’s Suitcase Clinic that provides resources for...

Matthew Aini

Class of 2025
2024 Schaeffer Fellowship
2023 Cal-in-Sacramento
2023 Diversity & Entrepreneurship Fellow

Matt Aini is a campus junior pursuing a BA in Political Science and a BS in Business Administration. A lifelong resident of the East Bay city of Dublin, CA, Matt was curious at a young age about how fast-growing cities like Dublin managed their growth and used community development to improve the quality of life for community members. Borne out of this curiosity has been a mission to advance responsible land use to make communities more sustainable, affordable, and connected. Matt has been proudly serving his community as a member of the Dublin Planning Commission since 2022, where...

Fiona Vogler

Class of 2023
2023 Cal-in-Sacramento
2023 Diversity & Entrepreneurship Fellow

Fiona Vogler is a fourth year studying Geography, with a focus on economy, culture, and society, and Political Economy, with a concentration in development and globalization. Her upbringing in Oakland alongside a neurodivergent sibling who faced significant struggles in the public education system provided evidence of systemic neglect and violence towards minority populations. During the Spring 2022 semester, Fiona studied abroad in the Netherlands, whose infrastructure and social policy starkly contrasts that of the U.S. These experiences ultimately demonstrated the importance of...