Rockwood Alumnae/i Join the Obama White House – Moving From Hope to Change

Three fantastic leaders with very close ties to Rockwood are moving to Washington!  We would like to extend our very best wishes and heartiest congratulations to Cecilia Muñoz, Van Jones, and Rhea Suh, as they move inside the beltway to make change.

Cecilia Muñoz was recently appointed director of intergovernmental affairs in the Obama Administration. Muñoz is currently participating in Rockwood's Leading from the Inside Out Yearlong Fellowship program. As former senior vice president for the Office of Research, Advocacy and Legislation at National Council of La Raza (NCLR), she supervised all of the organization's legislative and advocacy activities in the areas of civil rights, employment, poverty, farm worker issues, education, housing and immigration. Her particular area of expertise is immigration policy, which she covered at NCLR for 20 years. She has testified numerous times before Congress and appears regularly in the Spanish- and English-language media. Muñoz is the chair of the board of Center for Community Change, and serves on the U.S. Programs Board of the Open Society Institute and the Atlantic Philanthropies board of directors. Muñoz is the daughter of Bolivian immigrants and was born in Detroit, Michigan. In June 2000 she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in recognition of her work on immigration and civil rights.

Van Jones has been appointed special advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Jones will help shape the administration's energy and climate policy so that climate solutions produce jobs and justice for all Americans. Jones is a graduate of the 2004 Leading from the Inside Out Yearlong Fellowship program as well as a former member of Rockwood's board of directors. Jones is founding president of  Green For All and a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress. Van has also co-founded numerous organizations and networks, including the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, The Apollo Alliance, and Color of Change.  Jones has been the recipient of many well-deserved awards and honors including being named one of TIME Magazine's 2008 Environmental Heroes, and one of Fast Company's 12 Most Creative Minds of 2008. He is the New York Times bestselling author of "The Green Collar Economy" (Harper One 2008), which carries endorsements from Nancy Pelosi, Tom Daschle and Al Gore.

Rhea Suh has been named assistant secretary for policy management and budget at the Department of Interior. Most recently, Suh was a program officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, where she managed the program's portfolio of grants designed to protect the ecosystems of the western part of North America. Suh has served as a consultant for the U.S. National Park Service where she wrote educational strategy and developed programs to bring National Park lessons to public schools in underserved communities. As senior legislative assistant to Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, she drafted and developed legislative initiatives, represented the senator at meetings and events, and regularly met with constituents. Prior to working for Campbell, Suh was a high school science teacher in New York City. Suh serves on the board of the Environmental Grantmakers Association and is a member of the association's inclusive practices committee. She is also a member of the Asian-American Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy Association. Suh holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental science and education from Columbia University and a master’s degree in education from Harvard University. Suh’s graduate school project at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government focused on how the U.S. Park Service could formalize an educational program to bring the parks into classrooms nationwide.