Kegley Institute announces 2022 Wendy Wayne Ethics Awards recipients

Awards honor CSUB alumna, beloved Bakersfield community member

By California State University, Bakersfield

January 24^th, 2022

The Kegley Institute of Ethics at California State University, Bakersfield has announced the recipients of its 2022 Wendy Wayne Ethics Awards.

The awards, sponsored by Kaiser Permanente and Adventist Health, recognize adults as well as youth who inspire through their ethical commitment and actions to improve the lives of others in our community.

This year’s adult co-awardees are Jayme Stuart and Dixie King. The youth co-awardees are 17-year-old Alex Fan and 18-year-old Neftaly Gonzalez. Natalie Velasco, 22, earned an honorable mention in the youth category.

The awards honor CSUB alumna and beloved Bakersfield community member Wendy Wayne, who was a dedicated volunteer and ethical leader in the Bakersfield community. She served as a Peace Corps volunteer, a nurse at Kern Medical Center and as an advocate for child education with the Kern County Superintendent of Schools.

“We are extremely proud of our 2022 awardees and, in turn, we continue to honor the legacy of Wendy Wayne in our community,” said Kegley Institute Director Dr. Michael Burroughs. “Each of our awardees are taking initiative in creative and meaningful ways to make positive and ethical impacts in Bakersfield.”

The adult winners will each receive $2,500 for a charitable donation in their name while the youth winners will each receive a $2,500 academic scholarship. A celebration dinner will be held on March 26, which is also the date of the institute’s first Wendy Wayne Day of Service.

The institute is working with volunteers and the Community Action Partnership of Kern to assemble food packages for members of the community.

Kegley Institute announces 2022 Wendy Wayne Ethics Awards recipients

Jayme Stuart

Stuart is a child and family services coordinator at the Kern County Network for Children, which was established in 1992 by the county Board of Supervisors to identify and address the most critical children’s issues in Kern County, including the prevention of abuse and neglect.

Stuart, who was a social worker in the county Department of Human Services at the time, was charged with helping develop a structure for the organization and was its first formal employee, working directly under Wendy Wayne, who administered the agency.

Stuart has worked at the Kern County Network for Children for a total of 27 years and has been involved in many efforts, such as the development and expansion of the Dream Center, a resource center that serves foster and homeless youth.

“To think that my efforts to help improve outcomes for current/former foster youth, homeless youth and families who struggle exemplifies Wendy’s outstanding commitment to services and ethics in any way is an amazing honor,” she said.

Dixie King

Dr. King has worked for the past 24 years evaluating publicly funded programs throughout Kern County and across the state through her company Transforming Local Communities. Focusing primarily in the areas of health, education and criminal justice, she strives to find solutions to address neighborhood and community issues.

Seeing a need for young people to have a place where they could have a sense of agency, Dr. King co-founded Transitional Youth Mobilizing for Change (TYM4Change) in 2018 and serves as its executive director.

TYM4Change is a nonprofit organization that aims to empower teens and young adults by providing educational opportunities that encourage them to identify an issue in their community, develop the research skills to present that issue to funders, and to then create programs that address that concern.

Beyond academic support, youth in TYM4Change participate in community service projects, create documentary films and more.

“Receiving this award is both a surprise and a great honor,” Dr. King said. “Wendy Wayne was a colleague and friend whom I deeply admired for her service to the community. If there is one thing I learned from Wendy it is that we all have the capacity to create positive change in our neighborhoods and communities if we work together to find common ground, and there is nothing more personally rewarding than watching that change happen!”

Alex Fan

Alex is currently a senior at Centennial High School and is ranked No. 1 in his class with a 4.5 grade-point average. He is an Associated Student Body representative and is the Kern High School District Local Control & Accountability Plan Committee student representative.

Alex was the first statewide recipient of the newly created California State Seal of Civic Engagement for his efforts with political campaigning, community volunteer work, academic research and human rights and education advocacy.

He is also the founder of the Holocaust Education Youth Project, which hosts live Holocaust survivor presentations for youth in Kern County schools and for other local political and educational groups.

Alex is a graduate of the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation’s William P. Lauder Junior Internship program, where he worked to develop improved human rights educational materials detailing the history of identity-based violence for junior high and high school students across the nation.

“I was totally not expecting to be receiving this award, so it is very exciting,” Alex said. “I am excited to learn more about how I can honor Wendy Wayne's legacy of ethical service. I believe ethical service is about aiding one's community in a way that adheres to and promotes a moral standard, but I am eager to see how my definition of ethical service changes as I mature.”

Neftaly Gonzalez

Gonzalez is a youth leader and activist who is majoring in political science at the University of California, Berkeley. She is heavily involved in activism around the issues of human rights, ethical leadership in healthcare, LGBTQ+ rights, ethnic studies and climate change.

Gonzalez founded the first Multicultural Club at her high school and became the club’s president. Through her efforts and advocacy, the club participated in community service and community-wide events that focused on bringing awareness about the various cultures represented at her school.

Through the club, she also helped her peers find ethical leadership opportunities and educational events involving their own interests with either their own culture or the cultures of others.

Gonzalez also joined the Heal (Healing, Equity, Advocacy, Leadership) Project to expand her activism role regarding equal rights for Black and Latinx youth. She attended various community events and presented as a panelist while working with other community members and leaders to bring awareness, resources and programs to the community.

“It is through the dedication and selfless acts of people like Wendy Wayne that I am inspired to continue in her vision of being a servant leader,” Gonzalez said. “I am overjoyed to have been selected as an awardee, as it opens opportunities to network in my college environment and engage with the larger campus community.”

Natalie Velasco

Velasco earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from CSUB and is currently pursuing her master’s in public administration at the university. As part of the program, she is involved in two research projects, one focused on felon disenfranchisement and the other on North Kern State Prison's Transitions Reentry Program for Post-Incarceration Success.

She currently works as a full-time teaching assistant at the prison. Velasco is also serving as an intern for Assemblyman Rudy Salas through the Maddy Institute Legislative Intern Scholar Program.

Velasco has a passion to help improve public policy governing the rehabilitation of inmates in the California prison system and their reintegration into society. To that end, she aims pursue a career in public interest law after obtaining her master’s degree.

“I am very grateful to be selected as an Honorable Mention for the Wendy Wayne Ethics Award,” she said. “Wendy Wayne was an admirable woman who made a positive impact on not only the Bakersfield community but in many areas across the world. Her accomplishments inspire me to be actively involved in our Central Valley community to promote kindness, integrity and positive change.”