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Jonathan Tran

“Being in a powerful position means being a servant. A servant to marginalized communities, a servant to our students, and a servant to myself, all in hopes to become the best version of ourselves.”

As a young, bright-eyed freshman, Anjelica de Leon joined Associated Students Inc. as a first-year intern and worked hard to learn the ins and outs of ASI. At the end of her first year, de Leon was awarded “Most Likely to Become President” by her peers and colleagues. Since that day, it has been her goal to make that happen and today, it’s become a reality.

At 21-years-old, Anjelica de Leon will become California State University, East Bay’s newest ASI President. As a sociology major, de Leon practices her passion for helping others, ensuring students’ voices are heard, and working in a team dynamic, some of which are qualities she believes make a good leader.

De Leon is focused on creating better transparency between university administrators, staff, faculty and students with her plans for the upcoming school year. Mental health is especially a top priority for her because she believes students need to be shown compassion while going through the stages of grief from the events that came from COVID-19.

Her future plans contain two main pillars: Student Success and Pioneer Pride. One of the many projects under the Student Success Pillar is the opening of two new resource centers on campus that aim to give our Black and Latinx students quality help in terms of academics and personal aid. As for the Pioneer Pride Pillar, all of the programs and resource centers that are being established are in place to help increase graduation retention by giving students the connections they need in order to graduate.

“The students that come back to campus won’t be the same students that we’ve seen in the past, they’re definitely going to be going through challenges so we want to ensure we have programs set up to help them.”

All of her plans aim to enhance campus life for students and encourage them to branch out and find the people and the community they connect with.

De Leon grew up in Seattle, which is a predominantly white area so she never felt like she fit in, but CSUEB instantly felt like a home for her. She saw other people that look like her all over the campus and the diverse East Bay community is what attracted her to the area. Here she found a sense of community in the Alpha Phi International Fraternity as Chapter President, the Peer Academic Coaching Program, and as a member of the Pilipinx American Student Association (PASA).

De Leon is the first ASI President that had to run and lead during a global pandemic. As a leader during a pandemic, lots of people looked to her for answers which was never an easy task to do with such unprecedented times. She took on a lot of the workload for her colleagues just so they would have the support they needed while dealing with challenges during the pandemic, even at the cost of her own burnout.

“My hope for students when they step back onto campus is they open their eyes and take advantage of the programs we have on campus because they’re here to make their college experience the best it can be.”