Haas welcomes new director of diversity and inclusion
It was a chance friendship with a Taiwanese girl who offered to share her elementary school bus seat that gave Élida Bautista, incoming director of diversity and inclusion for Berkeley Haas, her first experience of “otherness.”
“My friend was a Buddhist, and she was the first person I was aware of who didn’t believe in a Christian god,” says Bautista, one of five siblings in a Mexican family who grew up in a Puerto Rican neighborhood in Chicago. “Until then, everyone in my world was a Catholic.”
After that day, Bautista says she stopped assuming things about people—and her life became an exploration of culture, language, food, and games of her classmates, who hailed from a wide range of countries from Korea to Greece.
Bautista comes to Haas from UCSF’s Department of Psychiatry, where she spent 15 years developing programs focused on social justice, diversity, and inclusion.
At Haas, she will set schoolwide strategy for inclusion, diversity, and equity-related efforts focused on students, equipping them to lead in diverse workplaces. She’ll also support students, faculty, and staff to build an inclusive school environment.
“A climate that supports and values everyone is the climate that will continue to attract the best students to Haas,” she says.