Teresa Valenzuela ’94, Cert. ’11

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You might not know her, but, if you follow the UCLA Alumni social media channels, you know her work. Those black and white photos of campus with a blue and gold #BruinUmbrella highlighted? A beautiful night shot of Royce Hall or a gorgeous sunset shot from the hill? Those are the work of Teresa Valenzuela ’94, Cert. ’11, who, after a 23-year career as a valued UCLA staff member (the last nine at Alumni Affairs), has retired and is enjoying a well-deserved break before embarking on the next phase – still TBD – of her career.

Valenzuela has spent most of her adult life at UCLA, starting as a student in 1988. After graduating with bachelor’s degrees in English and Spanish literature, she stayed at UCLA as an employee, working for Residential Life in a paraprofessional capacity as a live-in program coordinator in the dorms.

After a brief side trip to work at CSU Chico and going to work for Pacific Oaks College in Pasadena as she was finishing her master’s degree, UCLA came calling again and she was hired back as the resident director, this time living in Hitch Suites. In 2003, during her four years in that role, Valenzuela experienced what she describes as “one of the most amazing things I’ve ever done”: representing UCLA as a resident director in the Semester at Sea (SAS) program, on a ship that circumnavigated the world, visiting 10 countries — including The Bahamas, Cuba, Brazil, South Africa, Tanzania, India, South Korea, Japan and Canada — in four months.

“It's a floating university for a semester,” Valenzuela said. “SAS hires staff, faculty. They have work-study students. They have a library, a registrar, everything. The students study subjects that are based on the countries included on the voyage itinerary. When you get to the country, you can participate in community service projects as a student or go on planned tours or experience the country on your own. I think that's where my love of travel really came from.”

After working in Residential Life, she found a new home at the UCLA School of Nursing, where she was a student affairs officer, in 2004 helping to establish the first undergraduate program in the history of the school, which previously offered only master’s programs.

“They asked me to help with the undergrad program,” Valenzuela said, “because they knew that I had experience with undergraduate students and parents. So we started from scratch, making contacts with undergraduate admissions and getting ready for the new undergraduate students.”

In 2009, she became the inaugural director of alumni affairs at the School of Nursing.

“That's when [former Alumni Affairs Assistant Vice Chancellor Ralph Amos] and the dean of the School of Nursing were working in partnership; I was hired by the Alumni Association and the School of Nursing to help engage nursing alumni.

“We started connecting students and new alumni with older nursing alumni, who were really excited about helping undergrads. We established a nursing alumni board and a nursing pinning ceremony, which is a tradition in nursing schools with bachelor’s programs. Alumni were more than eager to contribute toward starting that tradition, which I believe still takes place today. That was wonderful.”

In 2014, Valenzuela began working full time for Alumni Affairs, now led by Julie Sina, Ph.D. After working with international networks for a short time, Valenzuela was asked to assist Brandie Barrera ’97 on the Alumni social media initiative, joining that team in 2015 as an associate director.

“We started working on growing the audience on the alumni social media channels,” Valenzuela said. “I think it was very timely for us to be able to do that; the channels grew between 20 and 25% every year for the first four or five years and they are still growing by 4% or 5% every year.

“When we first started this work in 2015, we were in a really good space with Facebook, and Instagram was fairly new. Everything was new, everything was different. My main charge was the Instagram channel. When I started to work on the channel, we were posting once or twice a week and had 2,500 followers. I would ask myself, ‘What would I miss if I weren't here on campus?’ So that's when I started taking pictures of campus all the time on my walks.

“I began posting pretty campus photos. We were hoping that would work to engage alumni and it continues to work – we now have over 35,000 followers.”

The social media team was, of course, focused on more than just Instagram and Valenzuela credits team leader Barrera’s vision for much of the team’s success.

“We were also growing our LinkedIn group,” said Valenzuela. “We are group number 31 on LinkedIn and the number of LinkedIn groups is now in the hundreds of thousands. We were number 31 because of Brandie’s early work to ensure our presence on different platforms. We now have more than 50,000 alumni members in that group. That's all due to the hard work done behind the scenes.”

Around 2018, Valenzuela was given the charge as director of social media.

She rose to the challenge and established herself as someone who understood all aspects of the work, from general strategies to the specifics of content creation and everything in between. And she is always quick to share credit with others.

“I loved all the work that we did. First, I was with Brandie and then we worked with the rest of the alumni staff and hired student interns to assist with social media. Our interns were wonderful because they were on the ground, on campus, keeping up with campus life, taking the photos and creating the content needed, as well as bringing new ideas and perspectives.

“We’ve had some really big wins — like being reposted by the L.A. Dodgers [her favorite professional team], interacting with celebrity alums like Dax Shepard, Sean Astin and last year meeting Jeremy Renner and his daughter behind the scenes at the annual Spring Sing event – and small wins, like hearing the pride expressed by parents when a photo of their child in UCLA gear is posted. The most important thing is the engagement that we’ve maintained with alumni and how they have helped to create the content and give us direction on what they want to see posted.”

Many of the UCLA Alumni hashtags — such as #IMissUCLA, #BruinProud and #UCBruinsEverywhere — were created to help the engagement, and many of them grew because alumni kept sharing content with the team via the channels.

Collaborating with other Alumni Association teams and other UCLA social media staff also helped with the reach and quality of the channels. The pandemic and other recent events necessitated closer coordination, so relationship building and exchanges of ideas with other staff have been key to the success of the work.

Even before deciding to retire from UCLA, Valenzuela was actively passing on her knowledge and expertise to others.

“I think part of my work, in the last few years, has been helping people understand the depth of what we do behind the scenes. A lot of details are involved and unless you're actively doing the work you may not realize how much work it takes to keep our channels going. Being appreciated for all the work we did is very gratifying.”

Valenzuela is justifiably proud of her long tenure at UCLA, as a student as well as an employee.

“It was one heck of a ride, when I really think about everything I have been able to accomplish, like being awarded a scholarship from the retiree association, through the UCLA Staff Assembly, which helped me get my print journalism certificate from UCLA Extension. I got to participate in the Professional Development Program. I volunteered with the Latino Staff and Faculty Association and UCLA Staff Assembly and two years ago I was part of the Hispanic Serving Institution task force created by the Chancellor. I took advantage of a lot of the resources available to staff.”

Valenzuela got to quench some of her thirst for travel by hosting UCLA Alumni Travel tours four times, and those were often filled with memorable moments and experiencing amazing destinations with other Bruins, some of whom she continues to be in touch with.

As she enjoys a well-earned break and contemplates next steps, it’s clear that her time at UCLA will remain dear to her. And she is grateful to those who helped make it possible, especially Associate Vice Chancellor Sina.

“Thank you to Julie. I always thank her for her guidance because she's the one that brought me from Nursing and gave me the chance to work on the social media team. She has been a great mentor and friend.”

All of her Alumni Affairs colleagues wish Teresa a very happy retirement from UCLA and much success in the next act of her life and career.