Finding her voice

Brenda Maldonado, coordinator of the Multicultural Center at PCC Rock Creek, inspires and encourages students to find their own voices to make a difference.

By Meryl Lipman
The Portland Upside
April 2010

Brenda Maldonado

Depending on the day or event, the contents of Brenda Maldonado’s car say much about the work she does in her multiple roles at Portland Community College (PCC).

On January 22, her beleaguered Subaru carried 8,300 pounds of food to the Oregon Food Bank in Hillsboro. Brenda got the idea for an MLK food drive at the PCC Rock Creek Campus after reading a statistic on increasing hunger in Washington County. She challenged her students to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Day by doing service, “to see poverty as more than a conversation.”

As PCC Rock Creek’s Multicultural Center & Retention Coordinator, she convinced 105 students and 20 staffers to sacrifice their vacation day, January 18th, to stand outside supermarkets collecting food cans for Oregon Food Bank.

When Brenda arrived at PCC four years ago, she challenged herself to expand the campus’ multicultural center, which she says consisted of “students sitting all over my desk.” For the ambitious 30-year-old, advocacy meant pressing the college administration for money, an office, and a room for the students. The Rock Creek Multicultural Center is now a thriving hub of languages, music, food and conversation.

Brenda also introduced PCC to Semana de la Raza, a Latino culture and advocacy celebration that has grown over three years to become a district-wide community event at the Rock Creek campus. Every December Brenda rallies students, faculty, and staff, as well as speakers, artists and musicians for the April festival. She scrounges in her own and others’ budgets, negotiates with administrators, and cajoles sponsors and booking agents to secure Teatro Milagro, Michelle Serros, Juana Bordas and others to come to Rock Creek.

The growth of Semana has not been without trials. Rock Creek’s Associate Dean of Students, Heather Lang, recalls an incident two years ago when the festival banner was vandalized with hate slurs. Brenda gathered her student volunteers and asked what they wanted to do. With her help, they organized an impromptu speak-out on campus that empowered everyone.

“Brenda handled it with such patience and grace,” says Heather.

Patience and grace may have been survival tools for Brenda in her youth. Deaf for the first five years of her life after an ear infection, she was shuttled between her native Puerto Rico and Pennsylvania for surgeries. When her hearing was restored, she learned to speak Spanish and English at the same time.

The family moved often, as her father was, at different times, a minister and a soldier in the U.S. military. When Brenda was a teenager, her grandmother, the rock of the family, suffered a stroke, and her father came out as a gay man living with HIV. Her mother has spent a lifetime struggling with mental illness and she was often violent in those early years. Brenda also remembers sleeping on the floor most nights.

“The family was very poor,” she says.

Brenda admits that her job at PCC provides a unique vehicle for “inside work.” She has partnered with veterans’ groups, anti-poverty campaigns, and the campus’ Gay Straight Alliance, but she says she is not ready to take a platform on child abuse.

“It’s still too raw,” she says. “Someday…”

As a hearing-impaired, non-verbal child, Brenda concedes that her work helping students find their voices could be a grand metaphor.

“I see a lot of students who are voiceless. I see a lot of dim lights who’ve been told they won’t amount to anything. But I see amazing human beings so I push them. I’m a pusher,” she laughs.
Brenda embraces difficult discussions while helping students find their voices. She is involved with Rock Creek’s “Open Mind – Open Mic” and a more structured series of round tables called “Courageous Conversations.” She mentors several PCC programs including Oregon Leadership Institute, in which Latino first generation college students mentor high school students from similar backgrounds. She also mentors international students, as well as graduates of her programs. She even organizes a multicultural graduation ceremony for international students and others whose families might be overwhelmed by the large PCC graduation at the Rose Garden Arena.

Yet Brenda still finds time to take her activism off campus, improve herself and have a little fun.
Over spring break she plans to do first aid at the Arizona-Mexico border because she believes medical care is a right, even for desperate Mexicans crossing into the U.S. illegally.

And one Thursday a month Brenda packs her car full of books and an overnight case, and heads to Silver Falls where she’s finding her own voice by studying for a PhD in Education with an emphasis on community college leadership.

Brenda is not all business, however. Although she will gladly trade vacation days for service work, there are non-negotiable times when Brenda’s car is reserved for her snowboard and shredding the slopes on Mt. Hood with a posse of boarder friends.

In February she put together a ski trip and lessons for 20 of her students. Several had never before seen snow.

“Combining my two loves, my students and snowboarding, was pretty darn cool,” she says.

Indeed, dressed most days in jeans and a t-shirt, Brenda’s students see her as approachable and just plain cool. She is like them, only older and farther along on her path.

And although she works and studies full time, Heather Lang says she has never heard Brenda complain.

“Brenda just doesn’t put that energy out there,” says Heather.

Brenda’s strategy for success may well be that she takes great care with her voice, avoiding negativity. She sums it up best:

“I’m not interested in drama and I don’t want to fall into a victim mentality, so I don’t engage. I don’t care who’s talking about whom. I care if they’re hungry or safe at home.”

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Meryl Lipman has a masters in writing from PSU and has worked for Portland Community College since 2003. In her spare time she loves to travel and jump out of airplanes.