Best of CASE District VII Award
 

Institution: University of California, Los Angeles

Title of entry: UCLA Changemakers: A Story of Co-Creation and Alumni Leadership

About this entry: The UCLA Alumni Changemakers 2025 event, “Radical Kinship in Action” was a half-day, immersive alumni experience hosted in partnership with Homeboy Industries, the world’s largest gang rehabilitation and reentry program. Designed to deepen alumni engagement through values-driven programming, the event centered on storytelling, community healing and the leadership of UCLA alumna and co-CEO Shirley Torres ’03.

Our strategic goal was to move beyond a traditional campus reception celebrating an alumni leader to co-creating, with our featured alumna, a purpose-driven experience rooted in social impact. To accomplish this goal, we developed each aspect of the program in partnership with Torres and Homeboy staff. We intentionally hosted the event onsite at the Homeboy headquarters in downtown Los Angeles, allowing event attendees to participate directly in the organization’s iconic morning staff meeting, tour the facility and learn directly from Homeboy trainees, visit some of Homeboy’s signature social enterprises and hear from Homeboy senior leadership. This design approach grounded Homeboy’s methodology of holistic healing in first-hand experience. This also allowed us to deliver on one of UCLA's strategic priorities - by hosting a rich learning opportunity in an area where our alumni live and work, we demonstrated UCLA’s commitment to deepening engagement with Los Angeles through our shared values of service, social impact and optimism.