Director of immigrant affairs to lead new Office of Racial Equity
Zulma Maciel, director of the city’s Office of Immigrant Affairs and a daughter of Mexican immigrants, has been selected to lead the city’s newly created Office of Racial Equity, marking the first public step by the city to address inequities in its policies, programs and spending.
“Throughout her tenure with the city, Zulma has demonstrated time and time again her commitment to our communities and ability to drive results,” San Jose City Manager David Sykes said in a statement. “The stakes are high with this very important new role, and I have full confidence in her ability to make an immediate impact.”
The announcement comes in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic — where San Jose’s Latino communities have been disproportionately affected — and amid an elevated national conversation around racial injustice and police brutality following the police killings of Black men and women like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor earlier this year.
Despite calls for diverting funding away from the city’s Police Department, the City Council during its annual budget process in June decided to maintain the force’s $449 million budget but also create a new Office of Racial Equity, which some council members had been requesting for more than a year, and award it with an initial budget of $1 million.
Maciel’s new office will be responsible for analyzing city policies, programs and practices with the ambitious goal to “eradicate any structural or institutional racism” within the city government structure and working with the city’s Police Department and the independent police auditor to “reimagine community safety,” according to a city news release and an interview with Maciel.
“The Office of Racial Equity will have the opportunity to work with the community to reimagine and reform the systems that have traditionally handicapped the progress of Black and Brown and Indigenous people,” Maciel said. “… There is a lot of work ahead, and I recognize that it’s going to take a lot of heavy lifting but also going to take a lot of time as culture changes.”
Although the office will be leading its efforts by looking at policies and programs through a racial lens, Maciel said her office also will consider how other factors such as gender, sexual orientation and disability fit into the equation as well.
Maciel was chosen to lead the newly established office based on her “diverse leadership experiences with the city, track record of authentic community partnerships, and resultsdriven approach,” according to the release.
Maciel, who grew up in Gilroy and graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz, has worked for the city for more than two decades in various management positions, including most recently serving as the director of the city’s Office of Immigrant Affairs. She led the development of the city’s first plan to welcome recently immigrated residents and was in charge of creating new strategies aimed at providing a more welcoming environment to improve the quality of life of immigrants and refugees.
She also has established relationships with many community organizations throughout San Jose while managing a $15 million grant portfolio for the city, where she was in charge of evaluating programs and investing dollars.
Over the past two years, Maciel said her office already had begun having conversations about racial equity and how it plays a role in city operations and the quality of life of certain groups of residents, but the expanded office will give her and her team more time and funding to tackle it on a larger scale.
Outside of her career in the city, Maciel also serves as vice president of Grail Family Services — a community nonprofit organization in East San Jose — and is on the advisory boards for HOPE Leadership Institute, also known as Hispanas Organized for Political Equality, and Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley.
In a statement Oct. 2, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo called Maciel “a fierce champion for San Jose’s immigrant and refugee community” who will be a “powerful voice in the fight for institutional change.”
Earlier this week, San Jose also appointed Nora Frimann as city attorney, making her the second woman in history to serve in that role. Frimann joined the San Jose City Attorney’s Office in 2001 and had been serving as the interim city attorney since her predecessor, Rick Doyle, retired in early August. Doyle died of cancer Aug. 23 — just a couple of weeks after his retirement.