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Click name to go to biography.
Robert Martinez, Jr., our current Chairperson committed most of his adult life (1989-2005) to the service of the State of California. As Deputy Labor Commissioner, he not only secured over $500,000 in penalties for the State of California, but also collected over $1,000,000 for several thousand employees because of underpayments and reimbursement violations.
As an Equal Employment Opportunities Investigator with the United States Postal Service, he conducted over 200 inspections that resulted in full employment, training and wages for employees.
As a consultant with the Department of Fair Employment and as a Licensing Analyst with Community Care Licensing he conducted over 200 investigations that resulted in net payments to clients of over $100,000 as well as reinstated employment and equal pay to several hundred employees.
As Retirement Program Specialist with CalPERS, he participated on a statewide commission that revamped entire employment manuals, and conducted over 300 workshops for public sector employees.
Mr. Martinez was also appointed by Gov. Brown to the CA Advisory Board of Vocational Education Programs and, by Gov. Deukmejian, to the CA Advisory Board on Drugs. Finally, he served in the Army during the Vietnam War and has written and published a book of poetry - The Hiker.
Martin Uresti, is the current Vice-Chairman; he brings to the table a rich and highly practical background in trucking, maintenance, warehousing, and diverse applications in the private sector. One of his specialties is that of technical designer in metal fabrication, and he has been prominent in the building trades, bolstered by undergraduate work at both Reedley College and Fresno City College and holds a B.A. in music from Fresno State University.
His involvement in civic associations and charities, apart from commercial enterprises, is most extensive. Subsequent to owning his own business, Uresti Trucking Co., he has built up a notable concentration in the field of real estate, in which he is a licensed broker.
Coming from a small, rural town, Martin is an outstanding example of an ex-farm worker who has worked his way up and accomplished much in a series of most competitive fields. Apart from his several specialties, Martin is also an acclaimed musician, which lends yet another dimension to his value as a private-sector component of our Board of Directors.
Joe Garcia, is the past Chairman, and is now the Secretary-Treasurer. He is of humble provenance, having come from a low-income migrant family. As a settled seasonal farm-worker, he has worked himself up the ladder of “The American Dream”, so to speak, and has worked for many years as Chief Financial Officer for Weber BMW automobile agency in Fresno, California. Both his background and his career ascension have been instrumental in forming his acute comprehension of the need for community-base services to the poor and disadvantaged of this vast rural territory.
Joe’s protracted business experience in the private sector dovetails admirably with his practical involvement in community health centers for more than twenty years across the broad sweep of the San Joaquin Valley. He also has served as Assistant Division Director of Proteus, an employment training and placement program covering several counties here in the Valley. Years in private business, inter-woven with decades of continuing ceaseless advocacy for low-income families to provide health care, job training, and day care for low-income families, forms a wide tapestry of personal success and a lifetime of giving back to the community whence he came.
Ruben Moreno, Board Director, lends a unique blend of specialties in two widely diverse fields: the law, in which he holds a Doctor of Juris Prudence from the San Joaquin School of Law; and civil and environmental engineering, with both a B.S. from C.S.O. Fresno and an M.S. from Stanford. He is both an Attorney-at-Law and a California Registered Civil Engineer, with an additional role as a California Registered Environmental Assessor.
As principal owner of R and M Associates in Fresno, his curriculum vitae is bursting with accolades for his work with various municipal, industrial and commercial clients in an impressive panorama of public works projects, infrastructure, environmental, regulatory compliance, sewer trunk line design, and the like. Typical of the complexity of his projects are water and wastewater treatment plant design for scattered rural cities across several counties; USDA ground-water feasibility reports; and a seemingly interminable tableau of technical issues concerning grant-in-aid projects from the full sweep of funding sources.
His heavy civic involvement complements a professional background encompassing widely dissimilar emphases, all to an extent of concentration startling to imagine, but of enormous practical value in guiding the mission of our company.
Victor Lopez, career as a community organizer started as a child when his family of 13 was denied access to a public swimming pool because they were “Mexicans”. They took on the challenge and the pool was integrated.
From then on, he spent his life supporting issues like farm worker’s rights, housing for the poor, health care for all and immigration reform. He embraced the whole community by supporting equal opportunities for all from children to seniors.
He served on the City Council of Orange Cove for 4 years and as Mayor for 28 years. During his administration, he succeeded in bringing housing, a medical facility, a day care center, senior programs, a new Middle School, a New High School and other programs for the community of Orange Cove.
During his tenure, his influence reached beyond the City of Orange Cove and the San Joaquin Valley reaching to the California State Capitol and to the United States Congress. In that journey, he worked with Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, Cesar Chavez, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Congressman Jim Costa and many others. Today he continues that journey as he identifies with and fights for the underserved and others who are too often ignored in our society.
William Brown, M.D., had a lengthy history in medicine, having graduated from U.C. Berkeley and Meharry Medical College. He brought a wealth of medical training and experience to the Corporation, with medical credits including Internship at Fresno General Hospital, Residency at Fresno County Hospital, private practice OB/GYN, and the Flight Surgery School of Aerospace Medicine. Recognition for his extensive expertise has come about a number of times by being named a Certified Diplomat by the American Board of OB/GYN, inclusion as a Fellow of the American College of OB/GYN, and recertification by the Board of OB/GYN, to name just a few.
Dr. Brown’s remarkable career included membership in the Air National Guard; Honorable Discharge with the rank of Major from the U.S. Air Force, in which he served as Flight Surgeon Commander; and outstanding community service with the Rotary Club. He was president of his own practice, the W. L. Brown Medical Corporation. The I-5 Board is most fortunate to have had access to his unique repertoire of knowledge in a field so closely allied with our mission and goals.
John L. (Jack) Evans, Board Secretary-Treasurer, is uniquely valuable for our education component, having retired in 1985 after an extensive administrative career in education. A graduate of Cal Poly with a B.S. in Animal Husbandry and Agricultural Education, he also holds an MA in Education, plus the following Life Credentials: Vocational Agriculture; General Administration in both Secondary and Elementary Education; and a Pupil Services Credential (General Counseling). Governor Regan appointed him to the Commission on Teacher’s Preparation and Licensing, on which he represented the small high school districts of California.
Mr. Evans began his career as a vocational agriculture teacher and department head in Madera, California, with responsibility over the FFA, Young Farmers, and California Adult Veterans programs. He left Madera to enter the Fresno State Division of Agriculture as Director of the Sheep Department, with an additional assignment in the Education Department with responsibilities for assignment of the student trainees in agricultural education to and with the local area high schools. Following his tenure at Fresno State College (1960-1962), he returned to the field of secondary administration at the Tranquillity Union High School in Tranquillity, Fresno County, California.
A signal accomplishment during this period was his major involvement in working with Alex Valdez, then Mayor of the City of Mendota. In bringing about Unification to the Mendota Union School District in 1987, as well as plan, fund, and build the Mendota High School, which open in 1993.
He spent the next 32 years in Tranquillity until retiring in 1985, after which he set up a private consulting business to develop curricula in Independent Study for Adults, Dropouts, and suspended students in California high schools. He also developed a state-wide 501-3c non-profit corporation for the Deaf in Fresno - still active today, under the direction of its Director, Nancy Carroll Mitchell (a deaf person) who continues providing educational services to deaf families.
Jack Evans has the unusual distinction of being a long-term survivor of a heart transplant.
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