{"id":190,"date":"2022-01-24T15:21:27","date_gmt":"2022-01-24T21:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/presidentialsearch\/?page_id=190"},"modified":"2023-06-07T08:32:55","modified_gmt":"2023-06-07T13:32:55","slug":"valeng-cha","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/presidentialsearch\/search-committee\/valeng-cha\/","title":{"rendered":"Valeng Cha"},"content":{"rendered":"

Valeng Cha \u201995<\/b><\/h3>\n

Director of Government, Foundation and Corporate Relations, St. Olaf College<\/i><\/p>\n

Valeng Cha leads external funding strategies and partnerships that support all of areas of the college. One of Cha\u2019s key priorities is working with college leadership to secure grants that enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion. He has 25 years of experience in programming, fundraising, and executive leadership in Minnesota nonprofits.<\/p>\n

Why is it important to you to participate in this committee?\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Prior to joining St. Olaf as a staff member, my memories of St. Olaf as an alum were mixed. While I appreciated the academic rigor and learnings, it was socially and culturally difficult for a refugee student like me to fit in. I didn\u2019t know it at the time, but my student experience at St. Olaf \u2013 all of it \u2013 taught me critical life lessons on resiliency. Rather than view underrepresented students through a deficit lens, I envision a St. Olaf that is able to harness the immense talents from students whose backgrounds and identities have felt lost in the shuffle, or have felt at some point that they don\u2019t belong at St. Olaf.<\/p>\n

What lens or experience do you hope to bring to this committee?<\/i><\/p>\n

For more than two decades, I have worked with low-income communities to address achievement gaps in K-12 and higher education, improve disparities in health access and outcomes, advocate on behalf of BIPOC communities, and tackle complex social and economic issues impacting under-resourced communities. I don\u2019t come from academia, which allows me to think outside the constraints of academic and institutional cultures. The combination of my career path and my own personal lived experience has made an empathic listener, and I hope to use this skill to listen to students, faculty, and staff and their desires in the next president.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Valeng Cha \u201995 Director of Government, Foundation and Corporate Relations, St. Olaf College Valeng Cha leads external funding strategies and partnerships that support all of areas of the college. One […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3439,"featured_media":0,"parent":108,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-190","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/presidentialsearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/presidentialsearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/presidentialsearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/presidentialsearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3439"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/presidentialsearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/presidentialsearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":926,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/presidentialsearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/190\/revisions\/926"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/presidentialsearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/presidentialsearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}