CSUB Chavez Huerta Leadership Conference Presents Renowned Speakers, Panelists, and Moderators

Co-founder of the United Farm Workers Association, Dolores Clara Fernandez Huerta is one of the most influential labor activists of the 20th century and a leader of the Chicano civil rights movement. 

Born on April 10, 1930, in Dawson, New Mexico, Huerta was the second of three children of Alicia and Juan Fernandez, a farm worker and miner who became a state legislator in 1938. Her parents divorced when Huerta was three years old, and her mother moved to Stockton, California with her children. Huerta’s grandfather helped raise Huerta and her two brothers while her mother juggled jobs as a waitress and cannery worker until she could buy a small hotel and restaurant. Alicia’s community activism and compassionate treatment of workers greatly influenced her daughter. Despite ethnic and gender bias, Huerta helped organize the 1965 Delano strike of 5,000 grape workers and was the lead negotiator in the workers’ contract that followed. Throughout her work with the UFW, Huerta organized workers, negotiated contracts, advocated for safer working conditions including the elimination of harmful pesticides. She also fought for unemployment and healthcare benefits for agricultural workers. Huerta was the driving force behind the nationwide table grape boycotts in the late 1960s that led to a successful union contract by 1970. 

At 93, Dolores Huerta continues to work tirelessly developing leaders and advocating for the working poor, women, and children. As founder and president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, she travels across the country engaging in campaigns and influencing legislation that supports equality and defends civil rights. She often speaks to students and organizations about issues of social justice and public policy. 

Marc Grossman knew Cesar Chavez the last 24 years of his life, serving most of that time as his press secretary, speechwriter and personal aide. He still serves as spokesperson for the Cesar Chavez Foundation and the United Farm Workers of America and was technical advisor for Diego Luna’s 2014 major motion picture Cesar Chavez. 

Among his duties with Chavez was responsibility for the union's press relations; helping Chavez with speeches, correspondence, public statements and commentary pieces; serving as his personal aide; traveling with him across much of North America; and advancing his nationwide tours. Until Chavez's death in 1993, Grossman continued working closely with the legendary civil rights and farm labor leader on all his major speeches, writings and news events. 

Grossman, 74, earned a B.A. degree in American history from the University of California, Irvine in 1972, and a master’s degree in journalism at U.C.L.A. in 1973. 

He began his activism with the UFW in the late 1960s helping organize the grape boycott. Grossman has performed extensive research about Chavez from the perspective of the people who knew him the best—his close family and friends. It includes lengthy transcribed interviews with Chavez’s widow, Helen, and his brothers and sisters. 

The editors at UC Press asked Grossman to write the forward when in 2014 they re-issued Peter Matthiessen’s classic 1969 biography, Sal Si Puedes: Cesar Chavez and the New American Revolution See: http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520282506 Grossman has written more than a dozen books, including his latest, the autobiography of pioneering Latino political leader Richard Alatorre entitled, Change From the Inside: My Life, the Chicano Movement and the Story of an Era, published in 2016 by Berkeley Public Policy Press at U.C. Berkeley. 

Named one of the Top 100 Hispanic Influentials in the U.S. by Hispanic Magazine, Corporate Woman of the Year by the State of California and Trail Blazer of the Year by the National Association of Women Business Owners, Acosta got her start working as a news anchor for KGET Channel 17 (an NBC affiliate in Bakersfield, California) before transitioning to the role of Press Deputy and later Deputy Chief of Staff to former Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre. 

Connie Perez-Andreesen is a distinguished certified public accountant who became United Farm Workers controller in 2017. She was appointed by the union’s National Executive Board as the UFW chief administrative officer in 2018. voted national vice president at the UFW constitutional convention in November 2020.

Born in the city of Tulare to Mexican immigrant parents, Connie Perez came from humble beginnings. After many years as a farm worker, her father worked at the Woodville Farm Labor Camp where Connie was raised. She was a product of the Head Start Program and graduated from Monache High School and attended Porterville College. She later attended Bakersfield College and graduated Magna Cum Laude in 2000 from California State University, Bakersfield with a B.S. degree in business administration and a focus on accounting. She became a certified public accountant in 2002.

Connie began her career as a staff accountant with a regional accounting firm based in Kern County and rose through the ranks to become one of only two Latinas to make partner in its 40-year history. The firm had substantial experience managing the accounts of major governmental, agricultural and petroleum entities. She assisted other partners in supervising the firm’s multi-million-dollar budget.

She was also appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to the State Lottery Commission in 2012 and served as vice-chair and chair of its audit committee that oversaw the commission’s $6.4 billion budget. Connie was the designated representative for Central California. She served as a board member and treasurer of the California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce, promoting business interests across the state’s central region, from Yuba County south to Kern County.

She continues volunteering with an array of non-profit and community organizations. They include appointment by the Bakersfield City Council to the Bakersfield Public Safety/Vital City Services Oversight Committee, board member for Latina Leaders of Kern County, Bakersfield College Foundation, the CSUB President’s Latinx Advisory Council, and past trustee for the Bakersfield Memorial Hospital Foundation. She served on the Supervisory Committee of the Southern California Edison Federal Credit Union and the California Budget & Policy Center. She also served on the California Democratic Party’s Finance Committee.

Connie was honored by the Kern County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce as Business Woman of the year; by Hispanic Lifestyle as a Latina of Influence; by the National Latina Business Women Association in Los Angeles as a Woman of Excellence; by the Regional Hispanic Chamber of Commerce as a “Mujeres del Ano”; and by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the California Society of Certified Public Accountants as an Experienced Leader, defined as someone who has advanced to the highest level of leadership.