Creating opportunities for people to meet and network, be involved with UCLA and find personal success are the things that inspire and motivate 2019–2020 Staff Assembly President Lucy Tseng.
“I’ve always loved connecting people,” said Tseng, a UCLA alumna who has worked for UCLA in development since 2015 and currently serves as regional director for the San Gabriel Valley, with responsibilities extending to the Inland Empire and Coachella Valley.
Tseng’s first major event as president is the UCLA All Staff Picnic, which will be held Thursday, Aug. 8, in Dickson Plaza from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The event will feature a complimentary lunch, raffles, entertainment and live music by The Solutions, a band made up of faculty and staff from UCLA’s health information technology department. The event typically attracts 6,000 staff members from across the UCLA campus and health system. Those interested in attending are asked to pick up their tickets from one of several locations by Aug.2.
“This is an annual effort to show this university's appreciation for staff,” Tseng said. “Every year, we do our best to put together a wonderful time, including a healthy meal, exciting entertainment and memorable moments. This is a time to relax, enjoy and shine under the beautiful Southern California summer sun. You don’t want to miss out.”
This marks Tseng’s 11th year as a Bruin. She started her freshman year with plans to become a business owner. “I wanted to have the autonomy of managing my own schedule and work life and be my own boss, essentially,” she said.
Beyond academics, she made things happen by throwing herself into campus activities, including: serving on student government on “the Hill,” UCLA’s residential community; joining a fraternity for undergraduates interested in careers in business; working as a resident assistant; and doing work-study at the UCLA Anderson School of Management’s Parker Career Management Center. She was also volunteering with UCLA UniCamp and Pediatric AIDS Coalition, two student-led organizations focused on giving back to the community.
“I’ve always had three or four jobs at once,” Tseng said. “I still do.”
She soon decided that her business economics program was not quite what she wanted and instead she pursued a double major in sociology and Asian American studies with a minor in education studies.
Tseng also rediscovered her love for sports and physical activity and loved playing intramural basketball at the Wooden Center. Sadly, an accident during a game left her with a torn ACL, she said, which led to physical and emotional struggles as she learned to live with this painful injury and recovery process as well as the limitations it placed on her mobility and independence.
But Tseng took lessons from this experience and used them to her advantage.
“It was during this time that I realized that a lot of my friends I was playing basketball with were student-athletes, and that if what I was experiencing had happened to them it would mean a totally different thing for them and their stay at UCLA,” she said. “If you were a pro athlete and you got hurt, what do you do?”
This experience left her wanting to channel her education and experience into helping athletes. After graduating from UCLA in 2012, she earned a master’s degree in sport management from the University of San Francisco and founded Resilientsee, a business that allows her to blend business, sports and sociology.
“I work with athlete-minded people to build resilience and success in life outside of sports,” Tseng said. “I work with people to find the things that they are feeling good about in their lives and help them transfer and translate the skills and feelings into other areas of life that might be a little more challenging.”
In the community, she has dedicated her time and talent to participate in UCLA Volunteer Day each year, and serve on the boards of NextLA, formerly known as the Los Angeles Junior Chamber of Commerce, Rotary International and the UCLA Young Alumni Development Council, to name a few.
Taking on the highest leadership role in UCLA Staff Assembly, a staff-run volunteer organization founded in 1978 to promote the interest and welfare of all staff employees, is just an extension of that desire to give back, she said.
One of her goals this year is to find opportunities to give back to the Staff Assembly board through added professional development opportunities at board meetings and designating funding to support professional development scholarships for board members, similar to the funding offered to UCLA staff members through Staff Assembly.
She also plans to create a past presidents’ council, so that these former leaders can stay involved and create a more organized method for the board to receive regular updates from the various campus committees that active members of the Staff Assembly are appointed to sit on.
Staff Assembly’s past president Kevin Baldwin said he is more than happy to pass the organizational reins to Tseng and is fully confident that her energy and enthusiasm for UCLA and its staff will have amazing results.
“As UCLA alumni, Lucy and I have always shared our love for the campus and its students, staff and faculty,” said Baldwin, adding that he and Tseng are two of 10 UCLA graduates he knows of who have served as Staff Assembly president. “Not only does Lucy radiate positivity, she truly has the staff’s best interest at heart. She goes above and beyond to make sure Staff Assembly successfully executes its events and programs throughout the year. She was an invaluable team player during my term as president and I look forward to seeing her break new boundaries during UCLA’s Centennial celebration.”