Fast Forward

Powerful Student Action Figures
Marlenee Blas Pedral
A VITAL VOICE: Marlenee Blas Pedral is eager to serve as the UC Board of Regents’ student rep next year. Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small
Marlenee Blas Pedral ’23

UC’s One and Only

Representation is a lifelong passion point for Marlenee Blas Pedral.

After moving from Mexico to the United States as a child, she spent her early college years advocating for higher education opportunities before gaining citizenship. As associate director of UC Riverside’s Center for Social Innovation, she researched the local impact of the U.S. census and co-founded a program to maximize representation for hard-to-count residents. And come July, she’ll be the UC Board of Regents’ lone student representative for the 2022-23 school year.

Selected from 93 student applicants, Pedral will have full voting and meeting participation privileges during her term. This year, she is busy attending regent meetings and learning more about UC’s governing body.

A VITAL VOICE: Marlenee Blas Pedral is eager to serve as the UC Board of Regents’ student rep next year. Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small
“I’ll represent all undergraduate and graduate students across the university’s 10-campus system,” Pedral explains. “Essentially, my job will be to amplify the student voice and perspective on issues pertaining to the holistic student experience.”

While working at UC Riverside, Pedral launched two major initiatives. The UCR Career Closet provides students with professional attire for job interviews and career fairs, and the Butterfly Project — a development and mentorship program — offers undocumented students career counseling, scholarships, and internship opportunities.

At Berkeley Law, Pedral served on the student-led Political and Election Empowerment Project, researching voting laws and redistricting efforts. She was also the school’s delegate to the Graduate Student Assembly, UC Berkeley’s legislative body for graduate and professional students.

“I’ll represent all undergraduate and graduate students across the university’s 10-campus system.”
“As a regent, I’m really excited to help make the student experience remarkable as we continue to overcome challenges and work towards building a supportive ecosystem for all students,” Pedral says. “The pandemic has presented many challenges for students, and I hope to be an effective listener and a strong advocate.”

Her top priorities include promoting educational access for all qualified applicants, innovative solutions that empower students and their success, policies that foster an inclusive campus climate, and affordable student housing.

Born in an Otomi Indigenous community in Mexico and raised in Southern California, Pedral is a first-generation college student. After graduating from UC Santa Barbara, she earned a master’s of higher education and administration from the University of Vermont and received a Fulbright Fellowship to Brazil.

While on staff at UC Riverside, Pedral helped develop marketing strategies and best practices for motivating college students to fill out census forms during the pandemic. She helped craft a year-long campaign strategy, oversaw its implementation with six departments, convened campus ethnic and gender programs for a racial data project, led training sessions, wrote op-eds, and promoted the census on Spanish radio stations.

“I look forward to helping the university innovate and move forward in the best interest of the students during this unprecedented time,” Pedral says. “I want to be at the table to defend what my parents sacrificed their lives for: access to quality education.”

— Andrew Cohen