By Willa Umansky PZ ’27

The Outback: Is there anything you’d like to share about yourself right off the bat?

Andrés Fernández: I’m delighted to be at Pitzer. I arrived in July from the East Coast. I’ve worked at a few different institutions and I’m grateful for those wonderful experiences. The philosophical, cultural, and political fit for me was important [when looking for my next school].

Student engagement [at Pitzer] sounded refreshing and interesting; to be engaged in such a participatory process where students are so actively involved. For me, it’s been a wonderful fit on a foundational level and I am very grateful to be here. I’m originally from Venezuela and academia has been a refuge of sorts. Before academia, I worked in a refugee camp in Zambia and I was the translator for the Venezuelan ambassador to the United Nations in New York, so I think a lot of those experiences to try and do a little good in the world transfer well to the values here.

OB: Why Pitzer?

AF: Of the places that I have worked, one of my favorites was Oberlin College … and I was reminiscing and looking for a small mission driven institution with a community that deeply cared about students, was less interested in hierarchies and more so in connecting around the collective and the communal. Pitzer is that place and I’m grateful to be here.

OB: You’re coming in the wake of a politically tense and complicated year on campus. In your role that is effectively the student-admin liaison how do you plan to navigate supporting students through conflict with the administration?

AF: The first thing that I hope to do is humanize our roles [as administrators]. I was a student once and politically active at that. Trying to bridge a gap and get away from this antagonistic idea [that] of, all of a sudden, we’re bureaucratic operatives —, and that’s not the case. 

I hope to bring in students and allow them to see how difficult it is to work in complex systems and shared governance institutions. It’s complicated, and these roles are particularly complicated during these politically divisive times. We are concurrently supporting multi stakeholders that may at times have differences … and we are hoping to do so in a way that is strategic and genuine in all directions. I do this work from a place of transparency, kindness, compassion, and care.

OB: If you could boil your hopes down to one primary goal what would that be?

AF: The exciting part about Pitzer being such an authentic, courageous and intentional institution is thinking about how we can engage in these difficult dialogues in more innovative, genuine and collective ways. How can we be at the forefront of engaging in constructive conversations across our differences? And while we learn and grow, also connect around collective humanity?