Faces of EBCE — Corina Lopez, Vice Chair of EBCE board

Corina Lopez of the San Leandro City Council and EBCE board, has moved from lettuce picking to the Ivy League to international finance to technology, making her feel at home with all kinds of people.

One day Corina Lopéz was walking across the campus at her college, the illustrious Princeton University in New Jersey. Princeton was a long way from her home in the farm-working community of Soledad, California. Lopez was in fact a daughter of migrant farm-workers, spending her childhood following the lettuce harvests in the southwest..

After high school she was recruited by local Princeton alumni to attend the Iviest of the Ivy League colleges. While Princeton gave her a scholarship covering about three-fourths of her costs, she struggled to come up with the rest of the money on her own, working up to four jobs at a time. One way she skimped was by simply going hungry.

“Often I had no money nor food,” she recalls. “As I walked across campus I was praying form help, and literally a $20 bill flew across in the wind. So I picked it up and went and got a sandwich.”

Having experienced food insecurity firsthand, Lopez has brought a powerful sense of social justice to her seat on the San Leandro City Council, as well as to the board of East Bay Community Energy.

“It has really informed me as a public official,” she says. “Being in public office meant I could be the person that changes those outcomes.”

A PASSION FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE

She was able to act on food security when the EBCE board approved a series of pandemic relief grants to East Bay food kitchens and other social service agencies. “I really had no hesitation about giving grants to food pantries,” she says.

“This difficult time has shown the rest of us what a lot of people go through all the time.”

Her commitment to social justice carries over to environmental issues as well, and attracted Lopez to the EBCE board. The farmworker communities she grew up in are exposed to large amounts of agricultural chemicals, resulting in high levels of cancer including her father who passed away.

Corina Lopez at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Summit wind farm.

“It’s a passion of mine, finding the intersection between environmental and social justice,” she says. “EBCE can improve quality of life, especially the health of people who are economically and politically disadvantaged.”

“I wanted to be involved because of EBCE’s mission – going 100% renewable energy with local union jobs.”

SAN LEANDRO: FROM SUNDOWN TOWN TO SANCTUARY CITY

Lopez has been part of the movement that has transformed San Leandro from a “sundown town” – where people of color were forced to leave town after dark – to one of the most diverse communities in the country. She led the charge to make San Leandro a sanctuary city, before the movement caught on statewide.

Lopez was San Leandro’s first city council member with an Latinx background. Beginning as a park and neighborhood advocate, she served as a Trustee for the San Leandro Unified School District, before getting elected to the City Council in 2014. She is an inveterate joiner, serving on numerous boards and committees, including the National League of Cities, the California League of Cities, and a non-profit group called Great Old Broads for Wilderness, which advocates for public lands.

“I’m looking to use political office to work for people who are disenfranchised, to amplify and empower the humblest of voices,” she says.

AFTER COLLEGE

After college, Lopez thought she would be a firefighter, since she had volunteered with the town of Princeton’s fire department. But passing by the career office, she saw a posting for financial work at Smith Barney. She spent her 20s doing investment research, living in Peru, Venezuela, and other emerging markets.

She was living in New Jersey and commuting to the World Trade Center area until she got laid off as part of a wave of layoffs. While she thought that was the worst day of her life, she was fortunate to miss the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. She lost friends that day.

After working on Wall Street, Lopez moved to Tokyo with her future husband, who had grown up in Puerto Rico. She enrolled in a Japanese language immersion program. When his assignment there ended, they got married and moved to California where they started an IT company, implementing enterprise software.

Her experience with computer technology has carried over into her life as a public official, where she became a pioneer in treating broadband as vital public infrastructure. By brokering a deal with the City and a fiber optic provider, she was able to help get schools hooked up to fast broadband, helping bridge the “digital divide” that left many low-income students behind.

“It really helped the kids jump across the gap and be in front,” she says. “Now it’s a formula that every district follows, with Chromebooks, cloud based curriculum and fast connectivity, especially now with the pandemic. But it was new 10 years ago when I began working on it.”

By chairing the National League of Cities Federal Advocacy Committee on Information Technology and Communications, she was able to take that vision national. The recently passed Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal includes $65 billion to bring broadband to neglected communities.

“The NLC has been pushing for an infrastructure package for many years now,” she says. “I am excited to see how cities, towns, and villages will benefit from it.”

MEETING PEOPLE WHERE THEY ARE

While Princeton and international travel gave her a good start, she hasn’t stopped working on her education, earning a certificate in finance with distinction from UC Berkeley in her 30s, and a certificate in public policy from American University recently during the pandemic. While on the Council, she completed the UnTapped fellowship program with Water Education for Latino Leaders (WELL), learning about California water policy and advocating for clean drinking water.

Her wide range of experiences in life — from picking crops to elite schools, international travel, and technology — has taught her some basic truths that have carried over to her career in public service.

“Despite the huge differences in our lives, the human condition is universal,” she says. “I’ve learned to be adaptable, to meet people where they are.”