OUR DIRECTOR
We are pleased to announce that Afiya Browne has recently stepped into the role of Interim Director, effective September 23, 2024.
From co-chairing her high school Black Student Union to becoming the Interim Director of UCSB’s MultiCultural Center, Afiya has remained deeply committed to student-driven social change. A proud UCSB graduate, she has a long history of advancing social justice and healing justice as both a student and professional. With over a decade of experience — including her role as the first MCC Council Co-Chair as an undergraduate and Associate Director from 2019 to 2024 — Afiya has been a dedicated advocate for creating spaces that uplift BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ students. Her work focuses on making campus resources more accessible, empowering marginalized students, and addressing the systemic impacts of intersecting forms of oppression like anti-Black racism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism.
Throughout her career at the MCC, Afiya has led transformative programming through collaborations with DSP, A.S. CODE, OBSD, A.S. BWHC, the Black Studies Department, the Women’s Center, RCSGD, CARE, EOP, and Health & Wellness. She has spearheaded initiatives such as the Advocacy and Collaboration Series, Mindfulness for Social Justice, and Defining Disability — fostering community empowerment and resilience, while building supportive, inclusive spaces to positively impact the campus climate (you can learn more about these initiatives on the MCC’s website).
Afiya’s leadership is rooted in her belief that social justice is a collective responsibility, with creativity, resilience, and community at the heart of meaningful change. Her holistic approach — grounded in lived experience, academic research, and a passion for integrating spirituality into community care — guides her as a healing justice practitioner with a decolonial, anti-violent framework. Afiya sees the MCC as a powerful resource for fostering self-development and social change and is proud to serve as one of its stewards, helping students find their voice and engage in liberatory work. As Interim Director, she is excited to continue building an inclusive and empowering space for all and looks forward to connecting with you this academic year.
OUR MISSION
This symbol represents the unity of humankind—moving, passing, returning again to those central intersections where people and cultures share deep human values—interlaced through our common humanity and continually confronted with our need to understand one another.
In 1987, the MultiCultural Center was created out of student demands, along with the support of the larger campus community, for a safer and inclusive community space for students of color at UCSB. With the original intent to facilitate the recruitment and retention of students of color and to combat intersecting systems of institutional oppression and racism, the center has grown, both in its mission and physical footprint, to address myriad social justice issues and take action in pursuit of a more just society.
Through its pillars of educational programming, student engagement, and community outreach, the MultiCultural Center models a mutually supportive relationship with its students, the campus at large, and serves as a bridge to the larger surrounding community. These pillars, along with the day-to-day interactions and opportunities for students and community members to foster and maintain connections, continue to ground the center as a shared community space that provides platforms for critical dialogue and serves to uphold a safer, welcoming space that validates marginalized identities.
Students have been, and remain, central to the MultiCultural Center. As a home for students who may not otherwise find such spaces on- or off-campus, the center cultivates a culture of care-work and belonging for students and student coalitions through opportunities for development and empowerment in their academic, professional, and personal pursuits. By centering the people that find a home at the MultiCultural Center, we seek to foster meaningful relationships that uplift students, staff, faculty, and the off-campus community through shared values and experiences that will empower the individual and the collective to serve as advocates for positive change in our communities.
As cultural centers often occupy a precarious position and face challenges, the MultiCultural Center’s commitment to collective social justice work cannot and will not stop. Through the unwavering support of student lock-in fees, the center is steadfast in its commitment to materialize its mission. It is vital that the MultiCultural Center remain an autonomous site through the direct guidance of student leadership, staff, and faculty. We will continue to uplift marginalized identities and communities because these values remain at the heart of the center. Despite existing in the margins while working within an institution, we will preserve and continually improve the MultiCultural Center as a place of knowledge, resistance, empathy, advocacy, and community for future generations of students, activists, and the larger community.
—The MultiCultural Center Board, September 15, 2021
MCC STAFF
MELISSA WALKER
Marketing Coordinator & Publicist
Pronouns: she/her/hers
MARINA HABIB
Programming Coordinator
Pronouns: she/her/hers
FERNANDA MARIN
Office Coordinator
Pronouns: they/elle
SHANA MORAN-LANIER
Director of Budget and Administration
Student Life and Student Academic Support Services
Fredrick Roby, Healing Justice Coordinator
Kharys Ebert-Oats, Healing Justice Coordinator
Leah Jackson, Marketing Assistant
Brandon Jacob Salmeron, Marketing Assistant
Jaz'myne Gates, Council Co-Chair
Renee Faulk, Council Co-Chair
Açucar Pinto, Communications Liaison
Kaylee Aguilar, Program Assistant
Den Earl Dulos, Program Assistant
Micah Gerola, Program Assistant
Sebastian Manrique, Program Assistant
Ajani Tyehimba, Lead Student Assistant
Zhiyao Xiao, Lead Student Assistant
Samantha Hernandez, Lead Student Assistant
Sinderella Okwaraibekwe, Student Assistant
Skylar Roberts-Vermillo, Student Assistant
Justyn Escobar, Student Assistant
Breeanna Pernas, Student Assistant
Maritza Gómez, Student Assistant
Tuong Vi Tran, Student Assistant
Saide Singh, Graduate Student Assistant
Michael Romero, Lead Sound Assistant
Eli Hester, Sound Assistant
Dylan Williams, Sound Assistant
Shayna Gil, Jackson Scholarship Intern
Mariela Vasquez, Jackson Scholarship Intern
