Executive Director

Since February 1, 2019, Dr. King has served as the Washington MESA Executive Director. He oversees 6–12 Centers and 12 MESA Community College Programs. Prior to joining the WA MESA team, he served as a Seattle MESA Director and Advisory Board member. King has devoted his career to increasing educational opportunities for underserved and low-income youth. He began as a middle and high school teacher before serving as an assistant principal and an elementary and high school turnaround principal. Since then, he has worked as a district administrator, career and technical education director, chief academic officer and executive director for STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math).

Data Analyst

Justin is a Data Analyst at UW MESA and long-time King County resident. His educational background is in the social sciences, including an MA in Communication which he received from Ohio State University. Much of his prior experience has been with disadvantaged populations, including working as a Residential Youth Counselor for homeless teens, an Event Coordinator in his undergraduate school’s Multicultural Student Center, and as a volunteer in programs focusing on the Latino population. Apart from work, Justin is an avid hiker and gamer.

Administrative Assistant/Board Liaison

Jacqueline Hamilton joins MESA with over a decade’s experience in administrative support and project management/facilitation that spans across several industries in both the public and private sector. Jacqueline will serve as the Administrative Assistant to the Executive Director as well as the Board Liaison for WA MESA’s Advisory Board. She is excited to serve the future scholars of WA and has eagerly jumped in to refine the day-to-day operations of WA MESA’s State Office.  She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Strategic Communications from Washington State University. She enjoys spending time with her daughter, reading, and practicing the fine arts.

Program Manager, Grants & Contracts

Katrina comes to Washington MESA from the University of Washington Housing Residential Life team, where her focus was budget and financial management, technology oversight, training coordination, and program operations for the large team working to enhance the experience of students living on the UW Seattle campus. Katrina is a lifelong Seattleite and studied Public Health, Environmental Health, and Geography at the University of Washington and earned her master’s degree in Public Administration at Seattle University. Katrina enjoys painting, kayaking, and spending quality time with her family.

Director for STEM Education

Dr. Rubadiri-Mujugira considers her key mission in life to help people reach their potential, particularly those underserved by circumstance and passionate about engineering and science.

Lindi joins Washington MESA following her role as the Director of the Washington State Academic Redshirt Program (also known as STARS) at the University of Washington located in the College of Engineering. Prior to this she was the Associate Director – STEM Liaison in the Center for Career Connections housed under the RISE (Research-Innovation-Service and Experiential) Learning institute at Bellevue College. She also served as an adjunct professor in the math department.

Lindi was an engineering consultant for 8 years in Southern Africa. One flagship project she was fortunate to be involved with was the infrastructure of the 2010 FIFA soccer world cup games – the first-ever, on African soil. This included the fire engineering designs for the airport extensions, soccer stadia design assessments, and underground high-speed train network (Gautrain) design.

She completed her B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Nairobi in Kenya. Graduate school then led her to the UK where she completed an MPhil and Ph.D. at the University of Lancashire in the Department of Built Environment.

Lindi enjoys sports such as tennis and squash. She follows Formula 1 racing around the world and has been known to get up at 5 a.m. on Sundays to follow the circuit. She loves to travel and is a published poet. She lives in Seattle with her husband, Andrew and their two daughters, Lucy, and Lisa.

Heritage University

WSU Spokane

Edmonds Community College

Seattle Central College

Eastern Washington University

Dr. David Bowman is Dean of the College of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics and at Eastern Washington University. He holds a B.S. and PhD. in Geology from the University of Southern. He was a member of the faculty of the Department of Geological Sciences at California State University, Fullerton from 2001-2016 and Interim Dean of CSUF’s College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics from 2014-2016 before taking over the College of STEM at Eastern Washington University in July 2016. Dr. Bowman’s research specialty is Earthquake Physics; he has authored numerous papers on earthquake seismology with students and colleagues from around the globe. He currently sits on the Board of Directors for MOBIUS Spokane and Washington MESA. He is the Co-Chair of the Spokane STEM Network and serves as an Honorary Commander for the 141 District.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Evangelina Galvan-Shreeve is a passionate, results-driven manager with over 25 years of experience in Policy & Public Administration for K-20 Education, STEM education initiatives, strategy development and execution, and relationship building. She is a visionary leader, skilled in navigating and influencing policy, developing educational programs, resource identification and procurement, and management of programs and personnel. Evangelina has served as a board member for numerous federal, state, and local programs and organizations, building an impressive network in the areas of workforce development, higher education, government, and research institutions.

WSU Vancouver

Felix Braffith, director of student equity and outreach, has a deep understanding of the challenges historically underserved students face while attending college. The oldest of 16 children from a family with deep military roots, he was raised in Lakewood and Tacoma, Wash. Both of these ethnically diverse and culturally rich communities are where he provided transformative experiences for students strived to become the first in their families to graduate from college. With a background of working with the military community and directing TRiO programs, Braffith brings to his position passion and commitment for ensuring that historically underserved student populations are provided the resources, support and affirmation needed to achieve their fullest potential at WSU Vancouver.

Highline College

Dr. Jamilyn Penn earned a Doctorate of Education (EdD) in Higher Education Leadership from Northeastern University, Boston, MA. Dr. Penn has extensive K-12 and higher education experience. Currently, Dr. Penn is the interim Vice President of Student Services with Highline College; Dr. Penn is one of Highline College’s four vice presidents that serve on Executive Cabinet. Prior to working at Highline College, Dr. Penn was the Director of Transfer Education at the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) in Olympia, WA. Throughout her tenure in higher education, Dr. Penn has served as a Dean of Instruction at Clover Park Technical College (CPTC) in Lakewood, WA and Dean of Instruction at Lake Washington Institute of Technology (LWTech) in Kirkland, WA. Dr. Penn worked at the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) in Olympia, WA, where she served as a Title I, Part A and Learning Assistance Program Supervisor. In that capacity, Dr. Penn was responsibility for allocating federal and state grant allocations across the K-12 sector and for providing technical assistance to school districts to ensure that the funding was spent responsibly and within compliance parameters. Dr. Penn taught K-12 middle school students in a special education content mastery model at Temple Middle School in Temple, TX. Dr. Penn and her family have lived nationally and internally, as her spouse served in the United States Army for many years. She currently resides in Steilacoom, WA.

Alpine Immune Sciences

Heritage University

Kazuhiro’s current position is VP of Academic Affair / Provost at Heritage University (HU), Toppenish Washington. HU is a small, private, Hispanic and Native American serving institution located in the Yakama Nation in a rural agricultural region of Central Washington. In addition, he has served as a Director of Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program funded by the US Department of Education. Kazuhiro has extensive experience with working with minority students especially low income, first generation Hispanic and Native American Students. As we all know, diversity among STEM professionals should be much higher. Kazuhiro strongly believes that diversity among STEM professionals will greatly benefit our society by bringing in different worldviews from different cultures. His goal is to contribute his knowledge and experience of working with those minority students to MESA to achieve significantly higher diversity in fields of STEM workforce.

Pierce College District
Penda Samba is the Director of Advising and Advocacy at Pierce College Fort Steilacoom campus. Prior to this position, she was the Director of Tacoma/South Puget Sound MESA, which she loved so much. Penda’s background is in student services in secondary and post-secondary settings. She has been in Higher Education for the past 15 years and loves serving and empowering students, especially BIPOC students. Her mission is life is to uplift BIPOC students through equitable practices and to help them thrive successfully while completing their education. Penda came to the US when she was 14 years from Senegal and speaks 4 languages (French, Wolof, Spanish and English). She received her Bachelor of Arts in Commutations Studies and Spanish from Western Washington University. She holds a Master of Science in Higher Education with focus in student services from Walden University. In her free time, Penda loves to travel and discover new cultural food. She also enjoys spending time with her husband, 8 months old daughter and 3 years old son.

UW OMAD

Boeing

Tresha Lacaux is the 767 Chief Program Engineer for Boeing Commercial Airplanes. She leads engineering technical integration, implements and executes safety and certification processes, and assures technical safety, quality and integrity of the 767 worldwide fleet. Tresha started her career at Boeing in 2006 in the field of fuselage structural analysis and analytical tool optimization. Since then, she has held a wide range of engineering and leadership positions in both Boeing Defense and Commercial Structures Engineering organizations. Prior to her current role, Tresha was the 787 Director of Airplane Level Integration. She was responsible to oversee connectivity between all aspects of airplane level engineering including design, manufacturing, certification, safety, and warranty / support. She strives to be a good role model to the next generation of engineers. She currently serves on two Advisory Boards at Seattle University. As a board member on both the Mechanical Engineering and Masters of Science in Structures, she helps to provide an industry perspective on the skills and experiences college students should have upon graduation. Tresha has a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Seattle University, and a Master of Science in Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles.

SBCTC

Dr. Valerie Sundby serves as the Director of Transfer Education at the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. She has worked in Washington higher education for more than 20 years. In her current role at the SBCTC, she provides policy leadership for academic and transfer education, as well as community and technical college bachelor degree programs. She has a passion for the open access community college system and the work that occurs in this space to transform the lives of students. Dr. Sundby holds a Bachelor of Science in Cell Biology, and masters and doctorate degrees in Educational Leadership.

Weyerhaeuser