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Siria Martinez, PhD
Vice Chancellor of Equity, Innovation, and Institutional Effectiveness
Siria Martinez has nearly 20 years of experience in higher education and has dedicated her career to eliminating educational inequality. She serves as the vice chancellor of Equity, Innovation, and Institutional Effectiveness. She oversees the strategic vision and leadership of the Institutional Effectiveness Division and advances systemwide professional development, workforce diversification, and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility and Equal Employment Opportunity efforts.
Most recently Martinez served as the assistant vice chancellor of Student Equity and Success, leading the Institutional Effectiveness Partnership Initiative (IEPI). Prior to that, Martinez served as dean of Student Success and Institutional Effectiveness and interim dean of Student Services at Woodland Community College where she co-led an 11-person interdisciplinary Student Success Committee overseeing the development of a three-year Student Equity Plan. She also served as director of the Ronald E. McNair Scholars program at the University of California, Davis where she guided first-generation and low-income students to pursue doctorate degrees in their respective fields and, while working with this group, conducted research during her doctoral program that examined student experiences in community college developmental learning communities. Martinez also served as the Title V/Hispanic Serving Institution Project supervisor at Palomar College, providing leadership in supporting the retention and academic success of Hispanic and low-income students; the Graduate Student Affairs manager for the University of California, Riverside’s Bourns College of Engineering; and assistant director in the Office of Admissions and associate director of Academic Affairs in the Computer Science Department at the University of Southern California.
Martinez, a Los Angeles native raised in Compton who was the first in her family to attend college, holds a bachelor’s degree in rhetoric and communication from UC Davis; a Master of Education, postsecondary administration and student affairs, from USC; and a PhD. in higher education from Claremont Graduate University.
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Abdimalik Buul, Ed.D
Visiting Executive of Institutional Equity, Innovation, and Strategic Impact
Abdimalik Buul, EdD is currently serving as the Visiting Executive of Institutional Equity, innovation, and strategic impact at the California Community College Chancellor’s office. During this tenure he is assisting in ensuring equal employment opportunities and initiatives are connected to the classroom for the largest system of higher education in the nation comprising over 116 colleges and 73 districts. He is also an award-winning professor, and emancipatory educator. Known as an international keynote speaker and innovative dynamic leader, he co-chairs the Statewide Equal Employment Opportunity Diversity Advisory Committee (EEODAC) and oversaw its deployment of the 2022 EEO Best Practices handbook and 2023 Ten Point Plan for faculty diversification. Under his leadership he crafted a funding allocation for $20 million-dollars in EEO funding to improve equitable hiring practices for the state of California. Buul continuously provide guidance on statewide regulations and its successful implementation to districts. In 2024, he is spearheading the redevelopment and redeployment of the statewide job board known as the registry to ensure equitable access and employment for millions of job seekers. He is a scholar practitioner with over 10 publications in the fields of Diversity Equity Inclusion Accessibility and Antiracism. He has a keen focus on racial equity and an asset based approach on countering racial discrimination.
Currently, Buul has developed a framework to engage worker represented organizations as builders of the future of higher education. As part of Vision 2030, Buul is currently co-leading a transformative passion demonstration project connecting low wage earners and working adults from labor to college programs that will propel them to livable wages in healthcare, tech, and other emerging industries. Prior to this role he served as the Transfer and Career Center Director at San Diego City college connecting transfer and workforce opportunities to students in emerging and established career pathways. With over a decade of experience in the California Community College system as a faculty member he also served as an Umoja counselor, coordinator and professor at Southwestern college. He also worked as a program specialist at the San Diego Workforce partnership overseeing the deployment of regional Workforce investment act funds in the eastern region of San Diego during the recession recovery of 2010.
He completed his bachelor’s degree in Sociology and a master’s degree in education with an emphasis in community-based counseling and social justice, both from San Diego State University (SDSU). He completed his doctorate work in Educational leadership with an emphasis in Educational Psychology from the University of Southern California (USC). Buul is also a lecturer at San Diego State University (SDSU) where he teaches Restorative Practices and Conflict Transformation to students in the Advanced Graduate Certificate in Mental Health Recovery & Trauma-informed Care MA in Education with concentration in Counseling program. Buul conducts numerous speaking engagements, workshops and keynotes for multiple system stakeholders as he specializes in providing equity based strategic solutions to organizations and institutions
