DOWNEY – Ricardo Perez, Downey attorney and current president of the Southeast Bruins, is finishing his term with the UCLA Alumni Regional Network and is a candidate for the UCLA Latino Alumni Association (ULAA).

Perez, who graduated in 2004 with a major in Political Science, was instrumental in establishing a UCLA presence in the Southeast Los Angeles region.

He began his involvement as a founding member of the Southeast Bruins Board of Directors and has since expanded his involvement to include Thanksgiving food drives with the Regional Food Bank and a turkey giveaway in Maywood, a holiday teddy bear drive that helped collect close to a thousand teddy bears and stuffed animals for children undergoing cancer treatment at the UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital and Padres Contra El Cancer, and most recently, Perez launched the Southeast Bruins Scholarship Fund that is awarded to students entering UCLA from the Southeast Bruins region.

Perez helped establish a well-attended calendar of events, including a behind-scenes tour of Porto's Bakery featuring UCLA alumna Betty Porto, a wine and cheese mixer at Los Amigos Golf Course, a coffee social featuring former UCLA quarterback Patrick Cowan, a football tailgate party at the Rose Bowl, annual sendoff parties that attracted newly admitted students and their families, and a wide variety of mixers in Huntington Park, Montebello, Whittier, and South Gate, including heavily attended watch parties for the UCLA football and basketball games.

Perez said he feels mixed emotions about leaving the Southeast Bruins now that his term is up but adds that he is excited for what the future awaits.

"I am proud of the work that all of the different board members and I accomplished together and although I am sad to leave, I know that I am leaving it behind in good hands," he said.

Perez, who has been on the board of directors for the UCLA Latino Alumni Association for the last two and a half years, is running for president, a position that has been vacant for nearly three years.

"When I was invited to join the board for Latino Alumni, the first thing I addressed was filling the void in leadership and structure,” Perez said. “To that end, I brought my experience in other boards and helped establish basic principles, like implementing the Robert's Rules of Order and setting regularly scheduled board meetings, which allowed us to operate more efficiently.

“Once we laid the operational framework, I moved to engage more alumni, so I quickly relaunched our social media campaign and helped fund and establish our own website and email database to better communicate with our membership. Since then, I have helped fund-raise (bringing in $14,000 of the $16,000 raised at our most recent fundraiser), and helped organize different member-oriented events, such as the Dodgers game events, the tailgate party, and game-watch viewing parties.

“I also represented the UCLA Latino Alumni Association in the UCLA Alumni Diversity Advisory Committee and the newly established ‘All-UC’ University of California Chicano-Latino Alumni Association. Most recently, I helped organize an event to welcome and recognize Congresswoman Nanette Barragan, who is a UCLA alumna.

“If elected, I plan to focus on three areas: (1) increase networking events to help our alumni connect and foster relationships and their career development; (2) increase our community service efforts by connecting our non-profit sector alumni with ULAA members and students who can volunteer; and (3) perhaps my most ambitious goal is to work with key UCLA alumni to launch a $10 million fundraising campaign.

“Ours is an expansive network with a deeply rooted connection to the history of UCLA - juntos y juntas podemos!"

For more information on the Southeast Bruins or on the election for the UCLA Alumni Association (which is not limited to Latino/a alumni and is open to all alumni), please contact Ricardo Perez at rperez@alumni.ucla.edu.

Ricardo Perez announces bid for UCLA Latino Alumni president