uAspire

San Francisco Bay Area

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Heather D. Adams

Training Specialist, California

Heather is the California Training Specialist at uAspire. With a focus on California state-based aid, she supports the delivery of in-person and virtual trainings, assists with partnership management, works on training content development and supports the overall work of the Training and Technical Assistance (T&TA) team. Before joining the T&TA team, Heather was a UCOP program coordinator and a college affordability advisor. Prior to uAspire, Heather worked in the corporate sector and extensively in the non-profit sector including the West Contra Costa & Oakland Unified School Districts, the Crisis Support Services of Alameda County, and UC Berkeley's Cal Performances.

Heather has a B.A. in Psychology with a minor in African-American Diaspora Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. She's also a Posse Foundation alumna and a Generation Thrive Leadership fellow with the Golden State Warriors.

Why uAspire?

At uAspire, we tackle college access and affordability on an institutional level AND an individual level. There are many systematic factors that have disenfranchised and denied groups of people access to equity in education, impacting the quality of their lives. I'm excited that our organizational impact transforms not only our students and families, but also the practitioners and policy makers in our educational systems. Working at uAspire has also transformed me personally - I am a first generation college graduate and have faced similar obstacles that our students and partners face. I enjoy paying forward the care and advocacy that I've received from the people and spaces which cultivated my leadership. I want to empower everyone I can to know the options and resources out there to create the life they want, inside and outside the classroom.