Community member and recent graduate of the Alpert New Leaders Forum, Sunny Zia exclaims, “Community college can fly under the radar. Not a lot of people are going to wake up one day and say, 'Okay, today I'll find out what's going on in my community college district.'” But one day, Sunny Zia did exactly that. And today, Sunny is in the midst of her first term as a Long Beach Community College District Trustee, representing Area 3 (which includes all of downtown Long Beach, Cambodia Town, and surrounding areas).
Inspired by a LBCC student expressing their outrage over what they considered an unfair admission policy that gave preference to those students who could afford to pay more for their classes, Sunny recognized that it was time to get involved. Thinking back to that moment, she says, “I decided that if I want to cause change, I need to stop complaining, start repairing, and take a seat at the table.”
Sunny's strategy to become one of five elected LBCC District Trustees
“I decided that if I want to cause change, I need to stop complaining, start repairing, and take a seat at the table.”
was simple – she decided to talk to people. Knocking on 3,285 doors and talking to a lot of people culminated in a solid election victory in April, 2014.
Sunny defines her motivation simply, saying, “It's about Tikkun Olam. It's purely service.”
Sunny found an opportunity to begin repairing quickly, as she soon discovered that as a matter of policy, LBCC trustees routinely approved line item expenditures up to $25,000 without receiving any sort of itemization or documentation. Sunny explains, “Sometimes, 100% of the expenditures were under $25,000, but they ended up accumulating to millions of dollars.”