Global & Executive Programs
Sudha Shetty is the Assistant Dean for International Partnerships and Alliances at the Goldman School of Public at UC Berkeley. She is responsible for developing and implementing Global Leadership Programs in partnership with foreign governments. Her research area is focused on international child abduction and the intersection of violence against women and is a PI on the grant from the Department of Justice. She has also served as the Director of the International Fellowship Program and a graduate faculty at the University of Minnesota’s Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs where she managed Fulbright’s, Muskie, Bolashak and Govt. of India Fellowships; developed and implemented trainings for these emerging international leaders in the areas of strategic planning, policy development, leadership development, media and communications created partnership with Hennepin County and engaged the directors and department heads as mentors for the Fellows. She speaks and writes extensively on domestic violence issues facing immigrant women and women of color. She has been a consultant to the law firm of Dorsey & Whitney, L.L.P. on diversity issues and in her former role as Director of the Seattle University Law School’s Access to Justice Institute she developed a variety of legal access projects focused on battered women. She was honored by the Washington Women Lawyers Foundation for her work with underserved communities. She has been the recipient of several awards –King County Washington Women Lawyers – Special Contributions to the Judiciary Award; NALP (National Association of Law School Placements – Award of Distinction in Pro Bono and Public Service; Asian Bar Association of Washington - Community Service Award; PSLawNet - the Pro Bono Publico Award; AALS (American Association of Law Schools) - Father Drinan Award for forwarding the ethic of pro bono and public service in law schools through personal service, program design and management. She was a founding member and chair of Chaya, a grass-roots South Asian domestic violence prevention program in Seattle. She is an alumni of the Asian Pacific Women’s Leadership Institute.
Jean Cheng is Director of Strategy and Innovation for the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. As a member of the GSPP leadership team, she works to advance the dean's vision and the mission of the school, collaborating with internal and external partners to strengthen operational and programmatic excellence, manage institutional change, and foster promising innovations and enterpreneurial activities.
Over the course of her career, Jean Cheng has shepherded a variety of complex initiatives and projects, working with diverse stakeholders across multiple arenas and issue areas. Most recently, she served as the deputy director of California 100, a state-wide initiative addressing the policies that will help the state thrive for the next one hundred years. She has worked at UC Berkeley since 2016, first as program manager for the Academic Innovation Studio—bringing together Berkeley faculty and academic staff to advance teaching, learning, and research—then as advisor to both Berkeley’s Chief Academic Technology Officer and the Associate Vice Chancellor for IT/Chief Information Officer, researching future trends and leading One IT strategic planning.
Prior to coming to UC Berkeley, Cheng led the development of multiple award-winning apps, websites, and hybrid/online digital experiences, as a project director and Director of Digital Learning at San Francisco’s famed Exploratorium and as Director of Online Exhibitions for the International Museum of Women. With California Newsreel, Cheng also co-produced the acclaimed public television series RACE—The Power of an Illusion (2003). She produced the companion website for that series as well as for the duPont-Columbia award-winning documentary series Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? (2008).
Cheng is a long-time Bay Area resident. She holds a BA in Semiotics from Brown University and an MFA in Cinema Studies and Production from San Francisco State University.
Samantha Rushing currently serves in dual roles as the Program Administrator for GSPP Executive Education Programs and as the Program Administrator and Executive Assistant for the Executive Leadership Academy under the Center for Studies in Higher Education.
As the Executive Assistant, Samantha manages the marketing, nomination, application, and acceptance process for the ELA Fellows. Additionally, as the Program Administrator, she develops, designs, and edits the ELA Program Manuals, researches relevant topics in higher education, and works with the Founding Executive Director and Advisory Board to create the program's curriculum. Samantha has also assumed the role of Financial Analyst for the ELA program, to plan, analyze, and maintain the ELA finance budget; she manages the processes for reimbursments, honorariums, and invoices for all program vendors, faculty, fellows, and staff.
As the Chair of the ELA Indigenous Scholarship Selection Committee, Samantha spearheaded the annual ELA Indigenous Scholarship Fundraiser in December 2021, which has exceeded its goal for the past two years.
Samantha graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in English and a minor in Medieval Studies.