FACULTY & COACHES

His career as an organizational consultant began with projects through the Wharton Center for Applied Research. Zachary’s over more than three decades of practice have included multinational corporations, local and federal government agencies, major university departments, diverse religious institutions, and internationally recognized nonprofit organizations. He was an internal leadership coach for the World Bank for nearly two decades, co-founding IMAGO Global Grassroots with former Bank senior executives. Major projects have included facilitating the development of the innovative Buddha Fellows and Aspirational District Fellows Programs as well as conducting advanced training for the SEWA Management School team, each in India. Zachary has also lead efforts as contrasting as facilitating the convening of the National Policy Roundtable of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force while concurrently conducting a decade of psychology of decision making training for the intelligence community.

Other career highlights include serving on the dialogue development team for the President’s Commission on Race, conducting leadership and group relations training on five continents, founding the Student Group on Race Relations, and leading a multi-year process for emerging leaders of Northern Ireland in advance of the Good Friday Peace Accord.

Zachary and his husband, René Molenkamp, a prominent international leadership scholar and practitioner, successfully challenged a law to gain recognition of their international same-sex adoption in the Netherlands and were in the first wave of same sex parents to be granted co-parent birth certificates for their children in DC. They are also the authors of numerous scholarly articles and popular essays, among the most prominent is “Boundary, Authority, Role and Task: The BART System of Organizational Analysis.” They recently founded the Group Relations International Institute to further their coaching and consultation practices as well as deepen their generative study of conscious and unconscious behavior in human ecosystems.

1992 he began working with Triple Crown, a gang violence prevention/intervention program headquartered in the Diamond District of southeastern San Diego. He then created his own model program in San Ysidro at three San Diego Housing Commission sites. A year later he and others founded Izcalli, a nonprofit for Chicano/Native American youth in San Diego, which promotes self-esteem and self-determination through arts and culture.

Through Izcalli and Family Health Centers of San Diego, Macedonio was also instrumental in creating Circulo de Hombres, a cultural-arts/rites of passage mentoring program for adolescent and adult males that serves to reduce violence and promote higher education. Now in its seventeenth year, Circulo de Hombres has been implemented in the San Diego Unified School District, South Bay Union School District, and several charter schools in the county. His work with the program was part of a documentary that premiered in Manchester, England in 2010 and was later shown in the United States through PBS. He has consulted and spoken internationally about his work with young men for several years.

A published poet and playwright, Macedonio co-founded a nationally known comedy troupe, Teatro Izcall. Teatro Izcalli’s book, Nopal Boy and Other Actors, received a state award from the California Teachers Association of English. His work has appeared in such publications as Lowrider, Latina, the San Diego Union-Tribune, Enlace, and San Diego Magazine, and in newspapers from Denver to Florida. He was instrumental in forming the San Diego County Gang Commission and was recently appointed a Commissioner for the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.

Macedonio runs traditional Native American healing ceremonies for his community as he was given permission after many years of learning from several medicine people. He speaks at hundreds of schools and conferences motivating youth and adults. In 2005, he received the Local Hero of the Year Award from KPBS and Bank of America’s Neighborhood Excellence Local Hero Award. In 2006, he was honored with the Males as Positive Forces Award from the Chula Vista Community Collaborative. In 2009, he received the Local Hero Award from Best Buy and the City of San Diego recognized February 27th as Macedonio Arteaga Jr day for his contribution to the arts. Macedonio was recognized as a National Hero on Maria Antonieta radio in 2011, which was broadcast in the United States and Latin America. In 2014, he received a national Positive Impact Award in Miami, FL for his work in the community, which was televised by Telemundo and viewed by millions internationally.

County Office of Education.As a principal for a large elementary school in the Shelltown community of San Diego, she led the school in academic gains of over 100 points. She is the 2013 Cesar Chavez Visionary leader as well as a nominee for San Diego’s 79th Congressional District educational leadership award from Assemblymember Dr. Shirley Weber.

Fabiola is a proud San Diego native and continues to be active in our community, whilst remaining steadfast in ensuring that the complexities of our geographical space is understood. She is certified in Stakeholder Centered Coaching with The Marshall Goldsmith Group and also “Leading Dialogue through Conflict” with Public Conversations Project. This allows her the opportunity to provide coaching to large organizations seeking to improve their processes and employee engagement. As a leader in the development and implementation of change initiatives within large educational settings (including programs and people), her expertise in dialogue and conflict resolution enables her to successfully lead in diverse challenging environments. She consistently gains and maintains the trust of those she engages.

Specializing in topics of educational and system equity, dialogue facilitation, authenticity, improvement science, and adaptive leadership, she has taught in the teaching and learning department at the University of San Diego, has led many seminars on principal leadership, building collaboration, professional learning communities, teachers as researchers, and organizational culture.

Fabiola is current faculty for the administration credential program at the County of San Diego and for RISE@Work’s RISE UPP (Urban Principal Preparation) Program, which is nurturing future school leaders. She is on the geographic team lead for educational equity in the State of California. Fabiola is also a founding member of ARNA (Action Research Network of the Americas) and is a board member of the Social Publishers Foundation, which believes in the democratizing of knowledge. She is a National Equity Project Fellow.

Fabiola holds a PhD in leadership studies from the University of San Diego, where her dissertation work was on Latina leadership and identity formation. She is a published author and poet and is currently waiting on the publishing of her chapter “Belonging and Being Enough” in a textbook about Latina leadership.

a successful record of founding and facilitating over 100 local and international leadership capacity building workshops for professionals in the fields of human resources, science, technology, engineering, startups, education, and healthcare, and for organizations such as UNICEF, WHO, multinational corporations, NGOs, and universities.

Azadeh is a researcher with a diverse academic background from leading universities in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East, with a focus on intercultural understanding and diversity. As an organizational consultant and coach, her interest is to create a deeper understanding of self, others, groups, and systems to develop intercultural dialogue and collaboration. Her passion is to increasingly attend to issues of diversity, inclusion, equality, social justice, conflict management, women empowerment, mindfulness, consciousness, and reflective practices in leadership and organizational change.

Her educational background and global experience is significant to her style of program design, coaching, and facilitation. In addition to her role at RISE San Diego, Azadeh is adjunct faculty at the Center for Creative Leadership and at Pepperdine University Graduate School of Education and Psychology. She received her doctorate in leadership studies with a focus in organizational leadership and consulting from University of San Diego, where her dissertation work was focused on culturally-based leadership perspective. Prior to her doctoral studies, she completed two years of nonprofit leadership and management MA courses and a certification in executive leadership coaching at the University of San Diego. She holds a masters and a Bachelor of Science in Food Science and Technology Engineering and a diploma in food and nutrition security from Wageningen University in The Netherlands, and she is an alumnus of the Asia Pacific Leadership Program at East West Center, Honolulu.

culture projects; curating gallery exhibits; and creating art master plans. Her exemplary career in the arts encompasses everything from public arts management, to visual and performing arts program development and consultation, to creation and implementation of award-winning arts in education and arts in hospital programs.

Leah has held many important leadership roles in the arts, including Director of Visual and Performing Arts at the Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation in San Diego, CA and Director of Museum and Education for the California Center for the Arts, Escondido (CA), where she presented seventeen exhibitions over four years. She is a proud founding faculty member for RISE San Diego’s Urban Leadership Fellows Program, chair of the Commission on the Status of Women and Girls for the County of San Diego, and co-chair of the Imperial Beach Sun and Sea Festival.

In August 2015, she created the San Diego Experience of the Civil Rights Movement exhibit acknowledging the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, which is on displayed all around San Diego. In 2019, she created and curated the 1619 Celebration of Black Women exhibit for the California Women’s Museum.

Leah is an accomplished and published poet and writer, including significant contributions to the book, Teaching English Language Learners through the Arts, by Merryl Goldberg. Her honors include a Moxie Award for being a Woman of Grit and Determination, and being one of the selected featured women in Beautiful, Brilliant and Brave: A Celebration of Black Women exhibit for her work in art and culture.

and education. During his time in the field, he worked primarily with the Hudson County Child Abuse Prevention Center focusing on youth and family populations, conducting individual and group counseling; he also worked with college-bound international students and their parents in the Bronx, NY to prepare them for secondary education. Feeling a pull to academia and looking to make a bigger impact, he attended the University of Central Florida (2014), graduating with a PhD in counselor education.

Currently employed as an assistant professor at the University of San Diego, Kristopher focuses on research in pre-service military populations, practical applications for Relational-Cultural Theory, and minority mentorship in counseling. This has led to partnerships with the government of the Bahamas overseeing group curriculum with students and working with RISE San Diego assessing trauma. Kristopher is student-focused and active on campus, serving on several committees and participating in university initiatives including CEE Just Read campaigns and the Black Men’s Collective.

conflict resolution to successfully lead in diverse and challenging environments while gaining and maintaining the trust of those she engages with. She specializes in identity construction, dialogue facilitation, leadership development, diversity, inclusion, and equity, emphasizing self-awareness, empathy, authenticity, and collective discovery.

Roxanne received her PhD in leadership studies from the University of San Diego and is a certified life coach through Accomplishment Coaching. She works with clients on who they are “being” as a way of developing a new relationship with themselves that offers a new dialogue for how to view and experience the world from a place of love and authenticity. She currently teaches at National University in the Master of Science in Organizational Leadership, Goucher College’s Master of Arts in Cultural Sustainability and Master of Arts in Management, and RISE San Diego’s Urban Leadership Fellows Program. She is a board of trustee member for the Tariq Khamisa Foundation and serves as chair for the board development and programs committees.

he has applied his clinical, group-relations, leadership, and community activist experience to educate, advocate for, and be part of the empowerment of these youth. An adherent to the idea of “faith without works is dead,” he brings committed action to the development of peaceful, loving relationships among all of San Diego’s individuals, families, and communities, with specific interests in gang redirection work, violence intervention, and restorative justice issues among youth.

Carlos is a co-creator of Group Relations International and director of its Youth Empowerment Services initiative. He received his doctorate in clinical psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology and a BA from the University of California, San Diego. He has been providing community consulting and clinical services in San Diego for twenty-five years.

experience to create a layered approach to combining art and activism that makes an impact on the city and the communities where he lives and serves in. For many years, he volunteered as the program director for the Filipino American Arts & Culture Festival (FilAmFest), where he adopted a sense of civic duty and culture. As an original RISE San Diego Urban Leadership Fellow, Ferchil developed Sound Future: a creative career expo where youth from underserved communities can hear and exchange ideas with creative career professionals.