Charting a Course to Success
Chief diversity officer shares lessons learned on journey to leadership role

Ioana Patringenaru | April 12, 2010

Chief Diversity Officer Sandra Daley, right, answered questions from Jeff Gattas, executive director of University Communications and Public Affairs.

Sandra Daley was 11 when she came to the United States from Panama. Her family, headed by her mother, a single and strong woman, settled in Los Angeles. She enrolled Daley in an all-girls Catholic school.  

A few decades later, Daley now serves as associate chancellor and chief diversity officer for UC San Diego. She is also a clinical professor of pediatrics at the UCSD School of Medicine.

Tuesday, Daley shared her journey during the Perspectives on Leadership series offered by UCSD’s Human Resources department. The talks are fashioned after the “Inside the Actors Studio” series offered on the Bravo network and are designed to provide an inside look at leadership in higher education.

Daley talked about her childhood and her leadership style.

“She is an exceptional woman and I hope we’ll all learn from the story she has to share,” said Jeff Gattas, executive director of University Communications and Public Affairs, who interviewed Daley Tuesday.

Daley talked about some of the lessons she learned about leadership during her years as a student, a physician and an administrator. It all began with her mother—on a specific day, she said.

The younger Daley, then a teenager, stumbled into her family’s kitchen to make herself a sandwich. Her mother asked her what she was going to do with her life. Daley mumbled she didn’t know. Her mother asked her:  “Why don’t you be a doctor?” Daley joked that she just wanted her sandwich, so she agreed.

But the goal stuck with her. Her mother helped her make a map that showed how she would reach that goal. It included a stethoscope and a black bag. Daley added a house and a car. Her mother explained she’d need money for that, so dollar bills went onto the map, which hung in Daley’s closet. She saw it every day.

“My mother taught me that if you know what you want, you’re going to get it,” Daley said.
And if you don’t know what you want, you should spend some time figuring it out, she added. Otherwise, someone is going to make that decision for you. To succeed, you have to take control of all aspects of your life, Daley said.

Jeff Gattas acted as the interviewer during the Perspectives on Leadership series.

“What pushed me to succeed was learning very early on that, even though I was born into poverty, I didn’t need to be a victim,” she said.

Her mother also emphasized the importance of education. Daley’s job was to study and acquire the skills she would need to succeed, she would tell her daughter.

“She used to say that what you learn, what you put in your mind, is yours, and no one can take that away from you,” Daley said.

After Catholic school in Los Angeles, Daley’s education continued at the University of Albuquerque in New Mexico. She took a differential equations class in the evening at Kirkland Air Force Base. All the other students were men. She was the only African American and the only one to speak Spanish as her native language. “But I was included,” she said. “These guys liked me.” Later, she went on to study medicine at UCSD. She was one of nine women in a class of 43.

“Diversity and its beauty, I’ve lived it,” she said.

So it’s perhaps no surprise that diversity has been the focus of Daley’s work when she joined the faculty at the School of Medicine here.  She served as the assistant dean of diversity and community partnerships for the medical school. She also is the principal investigator for the UCSD Comprehensive Research Center in Health Disparities. In January 2007, she was named associate chancellor and chief diversity officer for the campus.

The audience reacting to one of Daley's answers.

Diversity, she said, is an end point. To get there, equity and inclusion are the best strategies. In her campuswide role, Daley spent nine months listening to various constituencies. She then identified four areas of focus.

The campus needed to create a comprehensive, coordinated approach to recruiting undergraduates, she said. The goal was to increase the pool of underrepresented applicants by 10 percent by 2010. As of 2009, it has already increased by 20 percent, Daley said.

Daley also turned her attention to succession planning for staff members. Accurate demographic measures and data about how staff members are moving up the career ladder is now collected, she said. But the work continues, she added.

In addition to staff, faculty who teach at the undergraduate level also became a focus. A faculty equity advisor is now in place for the whole campus. Advisors also work in specific divisions and schools. Finally, the academic scholarship produced on campus also must reflect diversity. The university has made progress in that area, but still has steps to take, Daley said.

“A change in the culture takes a phenomenal amount of time,” she said.

After the talk, several staff members, including Barbara Diamond from Human Resources, said they found Daley’s story refreshing.

“I found it was very inspiring and renewing,” Diamond said.