Alumni Advocates of the Year

Respondia Poole
California State University, San Bernardino

Respondia (Dia) Poole’s 27 years of public service in California includes policy consultant for two former State Assembly Speakers, staff director for the California Legislative Black Caucus, and a gubernatorial appointment with the Department of Fair Employment and Housing. Currently, she is the senior governmental affairs analyst and communications liaison for the Judicial Council.

A long-time member of the CSUSB Alumni Association, Poole served as a volunteer leader on its board of directors and for the past five years has been an active member of the CSU statewide Alumni Council. As the Council’s vice president of governmental relations for two of those years, she led the organization’s advocacy agenda, served as the Council’s liaison to the CSU’s Office of Advocacy and Institutional Relations (AIR) Office on CSU Alumni Legislative Day programming and Legislator of the Year selections, and provided strategic counsel on the Proposition 1D campaign, which resulted in $690 million to the CSU for capital improvements and equipment.

Poole was a charter member of CSUSB’s advocacy group, the Ambassadors for Higher Education, and is a founding co-chair for the CSUSB Sacramento Alumni Chapter. She has a bachelor’s degree in business administration from CSUSB and is a graduate of the California Legislature Jesse M. Unruh Assembly Fellowship program.