Graduate Career Team

Erin Brown is the Associate Director for UCLA’s Graduate Career Services, providing career exploration and professional development programming, as well as individual career coaching, to UCLA graduate students. Having completed her PhD in History at UCLA, she has a deep connection to UCLA’s graduate communities and is committed to helping graduate students successfully pursue their career goals. Erin brings a wealth of industry experience to this position, having worked at two multi-national corporations (including Toyota), as well as having founded and operated a preservation consulting firm in northern California. While at UCLA, she taught in multiple departments and was a writing consultant for UCLA’s Gradate Writing Center. She has previously taught at CSU Chico, where she holds a master’s degree in Construction Management. An ardent advocate of thinking outside the box and testing limits, Erin enthusiastically supports students who want to use their graduate training in innovative and unexpected ways.

Eddie Cleofe is the Assistant Director, Masters Students at the UCLA Career Center, where he leads the analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation of programming and resources designed to address the unique needs and strengths of UCLA’s 7000+ master’s students. He started his career in higher ed administration while an undergrad at Brown University, where he coordinated events and implemented programming for student of color outreach and recruitment with the Office of College Admission. Before joining UCLA, Eddie worked for Youth Development Executives of King County in Seattle, Washington, where he created and facilitated trainings and designed professional development resources for employees of over 115 member organizations in the youth-serving non-profit sector.

Eddie is also a PhD candidate at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology and serves as the human skeletal remains specialist for the Bicol Archaeological Project. His research explores indigenous responses to Spanish colonialism in the early modern Philippines, and his dissertation project examines changes in funerary practices, grave goods, and skeletal biology in a cemetery used for over 5 centuries in the Bicol region of the Philippines.

Elyse Gueidon is the Assistant Director for STEM PhD Students at UCLA’s Career Center, where she oversees programming and projects to support the unique career development needs of UCLA’s STEM and Health Sciences PhD students. As a UCLA PhD in French & Francophone Studies, Elyse is deeply committed to helping ALL graduate students thrive at and beyond UCLA and has spent the past seven years working in graduate student services at UCLA across various departments, offices, centers, and student advocacy groups including the Graduate Student Association (GSA), the Graduate Student Resource Center (GSRC), the Center for Teaching and Learning (TLC), and at the Graduate and Professional Student Alumni (GPSA) Network, which she co-founded. Elyse is dedicated to equipping and empowering graduate students to think creatively about the career paths open to them and transition successfully to the one of their choice.

Before coming to UCLA, she earned a BA in French Language & Literature from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. During this time, she began interning at Freedom House Detroit, a non-profit organization that provides wraparound services to individuals seeking humanitarian protections in the United States. There she discovered her passion for helping people to pursue their career goals while facilitating career preparedness programs for clients.

Omar Alvarado has worked at UCLA since 2015 in food service, student affairs, and academic affairs. The numerous roles he has worked in at UCLA have provided him a wide depth of knowledge on the ways that higher education institutions function to serve students. As a Graduate Career Consultant, he is invested in supporting students to tell their stories on their own terms.

Omar is currently a doctoral student in the Race, Ethnic, & Cultural Studies in Education division of the School of Education & Information Studies. His research is largely concerned with the ways that underserved students resist, persist, and transform higher education, society, and the political landscape of institutions. Specifically, his dissertation is focused on understanding the significance and impact of the field Central American studies on the personal, educational, and professional trajectory of U.S. Central American students.

Tosin Attah is the Graduate Career Intern – Marketing and Communications at Graduate Career Services. She is currently pursuing my MA in African Studies. This degree builds on her BA in International Relations from King’s College London. Outside of diplomacy and international affairs, her other experience and interests are in strategic analysis as well as marketing, PR, and communications.

Kirsten Fetah is a STEM Graduate Consultant at UCLA’s Graduate Career Services, providing peer 1:1 career advising to STEM and the Health Sciences master’s and PhD students. In addition to 1:1 peer career coaching, Kirsten develops and leads professional development workshops and educational programming. As a current PhD Candidate in the Bioengineering Department at UCLA, she understands the rigors of UCLA and is passionate about helping to guide fellow graduate students through their professional development. In addition to her work at GCS, Kirsten currently serves at the President of the Bioengineering Graduate Association. She is excited to use her knowledge of UCLA and its resources, in addition to her 4 years of experience as a graduate consultant, to support UCLA students and their career goals.

Eden Franz is a North Campus Graduate Career Consultant who works specifically with doctoral students in the Social Sciences and Humanities. Apart from supporting individual students as they navigate academic and non-academic job markets, she also assists in producing and presenting GCS programming and resources relating to doctoral student needs and interests. Eden is also a PhD candidate at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, where her research explores meat consumption and social inequality in the context of colonialism and cultural hybridization in the western Mediterranean.

Fatima Gonzalez (she/her) is a second-year Master’s student in Latin American Studies. She is currently the Graduate Career Intern working on consultation and programing for students in the Ethnic and Area Studies.

Karina Jimenez (she/her) is a STEM Graduate Consultant for UCLA’s Graduate Career Services. She is in her third year of the Environmental Engineering doctoral program at UCLA and previously completed a Master of Science in Environmental and Water Resources Engineering and Bachelor of Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UCLA. Karina’s dissertation research investigates water quality and monitoring antibiotic resistance in aquatic environments.

As a first-generation Latina student, Karina understands the challenges of pursuing higher education for students from underrepresented backgrounds. In her undergraduate years, she struggled to balance her time between maintaining on- and off-campus jobs and internships, volunteering in a research lab, and taking full course loads. While she struggled academically, the relationships Karina built with faculty led her to graduate school, where she has excelled in her research. Karina ultimately realized that many obstacles she endured stemmed from not being aware of the tools and resources available for students like her. In her graduate years, Karina has worked as a TA for both graduate and undergraduate courses, participated in the Center for Integrated Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL) network, and completed an internship at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Karina is excited to help students find resources that will help them navigate career options, as she explores career paths herself. She encourages students to seek out the tools and services available on campus, especially at the Career Center!

Sophie Rickless is a Graduate Career Consultant specializing in Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences with experience in coaching students who are interested in academic and/or non-academic careers, as well as event planning and facilitating. She is especially passionate about helping students to craft their own personal narratives, which are vital to strong application documents and interviews, and have the added benefit of boosting self-confidence. Sophie is a fourth-year PhD student in the department of English and is commencing a dissertation tentatively focused on education and the history of ideas in late nineteenth and early twentieth century British and Irish novels. Sophie’s other current endeavors include a fellowship with the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library to conduct archival research on Oscar Wilde, enrollment in the UCLA Certificate program in College Counseling, and website maintenance for the D.H. Lawrence Society of North America.

Christina Rodriguez is a third year graduate student here at UCLA in the Latin American Studies M.A. program. She completed her first Masters of Social Science at UCLA as well. Her interests are in culture, diversity, identity, and inclusion and looks to bring these things into her research and work.