Zakiya Carr Johnson, the chief diversity and inclusion officer for the U.S. Department of State, returned to her hometown of East Palo Alto in late September to speak at a community event held in her honor.
Around 50 people attended the event hosted by the East Palo Alto Community Archive, a nonprofit that aims to celebrate and preserve the city’s history. Sept 28, the day of the event, was officially declared “Zakiya Carr Johnson Day” by the city of East Palo Alto to commemorate Carr Johnson’s achievements.
“The children of East Palo Alto deserve to know the world and it deserves to know them too,” Carr Johnson said during the event.
Various community leaders were in attendance, including East Palo Alto Vice-Mayor Lisa Gauthier and Deborah Lewis-Virges, who is running for the city council.
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Itzel Luna is a coterminal master’s student on the journalism track and a senior at Stanford studying Sociology and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. She has covered various social justice issues ranging from student protests to worker rights on campus. Born and raised in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, her reporting has centered in California, where she has interned for the Los Angeles Times, CalMatters and the Wall Street Journal, focusing on Latinx communities, education and social justice.
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Sasha Tuddenham lives for a good story. She spent half of her time at Marist College on the New York campus working as an editor for her student newspaper, and the other half researching and working in international relations in Florence, Italy and Washington, D.C. Through her internships in the journalism and political realms, she uncovered a passion for writing about global diplomacy, graduating early to work in the heart of political production in D.C. Growing up in New Jersey, she is ecstatic to compare West Coast bagels to the East Coast icon.
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