This is the third in a series of stories about our four new members of the CSUB Alumni Association Board of Directors.

Vanessa Frando has risen high up the ranks at the Kern County Department of Human Services, but her most rewarding career experience was as a social worker.

A pregnant woman Frando helped connect with services and regain custody of her child ended up naming her baby after her.

“I was so taken aback that I had meant that much to this family,” Frando remembered. “It solidified for me that this was what my career was meant to be.”

Frando, 44, is assistant director of Human Services’ Program Support Bureau overseeing staff development, training, quality assurance, facilities and more. She’s worked for Human Services since earning her first degree from CSUB in 1999, a bachelor’s degree in psychology with a minor in criminal justice. Frando also earned a master’s in social work from CSUB in 2003.

She started out her career as a social worker for six years before moving up to social services supervisor, program specialist and program director. As a program specialist she led a county self-assessment and improvement plan that after an analysis of data, interviews with clients and collaboration with partner agencies looked at what child welfare services does and how it can do better.

In October 2019 she rose to her current position. Among her key roles these days is overseeing staff’s safe return to full-time in-person work following more than a year of remote, and then hybrid, work due to the pandemic.

Frando grew up in Delano, graduated from Delano High, and is a first-generation college graduate. As a student she earned a Hispanic Excellence Scholarship Fund award and was accepted into the Helen Hawk Honors Program. As an alum she’s helped the Department of Social Work with its curriculum accreditation, volunteered at events and mentored in the `Runner Alumni Mentor Program.

Frando says she’s done all those things, and now is joining the Alumni Association board, to pay her alma mater back for the education and faculty mentorship that helped make her career accomplishments possible. 

And, she said, she has the time now that the sons she shares with her husband, fellow double CSUB alum and Bakersfield Fire Department Deputy Chief John Frando, are on the cusp of turning 15 and 17.

“CSUB was so good to me both times, in graduate school and as an undergraduate,” she said. “I have always wanted to give back to the university, and now I have the time and opportunity to do that.”