Three UC Santa Cruz alumnae, Judith Bell, Katherine Evans, and Ruby Bolaria Shifrin, were among the 100 most powerful, inspiring, and influential women honored in San Francisco Business Times Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business of 2024.
Judith Bell (Stevenson ’81, American studies, biology) is the chief impact officer for the San Francisco Foundation. She leads the foundation’s community impact efforts across the Bay Area focusing on the people, places, and power that can advance the foundation’s equity agenda.
“I have a sense of responsibility to make a difference, to contribute to the movement for greater racial and economic equity,” Bell said. “It came from my grandfather, who had fled Lithuania in the early 1900s and came to the U.S. before we closed our borders to certain immigrants. I grew up in a Jewish family where we were asked every day, ‘What was your mitzvah (good deed) today?’ My father modeled this as a doctor fighting for greater access to quality health care.”
Prior to her work with the San Francisco Foundation, Bell worked on several efforts alongside the Obama administration including Promise Neighborhoods, to improve the lives of children from cradle to career, and the national Healthy Food Financing Initiative which unlocked billions of dollars to improve access to healthy food in communities across the country.
Bell received her B.A. in American studies and biology from UC Santa Cruz, and her MPA from Harvard Kennedy School.
Katherine Evans (Porter ’98, politics) is the executive vice president and chief legal officer for CSAA Insurance Group. She was appointed interim chief legal officer in 2023 after five years as the company’s vice president of regulatory and government affairs, where she played a pivotal role in driving innovation and implementing new business initiatives.
“It is important to me to do things that matter and that have purpose,” Evans said in the San Francisco Business Times. “For the most part, generations leave the world better than they found it; I want to make this true for my own generation and for those that come after me. If you have an opportunity to positively impact the world we live in, embrace it. That impact is not a privilege, but a responsibility.
Evans graduated with honors from UC Santa Cruz and received her law degree, cum laude, from University of California, Hastings, where she was managing editor of the Hastings Law Review.
Ruby Bolaria Shifrin (College Nine ’07, politics) is the vice president and head of community for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). As the head of community, Shifrin leads CZI’s Housing and Homelessness and Bay Area Giving programs. In the program, CZI works to improve housing affordability and access so people from all backgrounds and income levels can live, work, and thrive across California.
“I realized I had won the genetic lottery simply by being born into a relatively stable home,” Shifrin said in an article for CZI. “I knew then I wanted to work on figuring out how to ensure everyone can begin life at the same starting line. It’s unacceptable that some people are born with so many more obstacles perpetuating intergenerational poverty.”
Shifrin received her B.A. in politics from UC Santa Cruz and her M.A. in urban and regional planning from UC Los Angeles.
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