Ned LeBlond (he, him, his)

Executive Director, Institute for Social Transformation and Campus + Community

319-321-4356, nleblond@ucsc.edu

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Ned LeBlond is the executive director of the Institute for Social Transformation and Campus + Community. He supervises the Institute’s staff of community practitioners, who improve partner integration across the entire research lifecycle. Ned works with faculty who are leading interdisciplinary centers and research initiatives to develop human-centered implementation strategies, develop partnership agreements, and support the conceptualization and design of all aspects of their equity-focused research projects. To help these projects thrive, Ned helps faculty strategically approach and compete for large, complex, and interdisciplinary grants to support their vision. As a UC Community Engagement Network Council member, Ned helps promote community-engaged practices across the UC system.

Throughout his years at UC Santa Cruz, he has nurtured and built a culture of collaboration across campus, while helping units manage change. With the Genomics Institute, he helped projects negotiate growing funding needs and fulfill their project aims on time. Later, as one of the original hires in the UC Santa Cruz Office of Research’s Research Development unit, he played a pivotal role in establishing consistent and competitive grant support services across campus and helping faculty navigate bureaucracies and large multidisciplinary funding competitions. His professional expertise is helping teams navigate interpersonal dynamics, clarify their project goals and approaches, and structure themselves purposefully. 

Throughout his career, Ned has been committed to promoting environmental justice and working with and supporting minoritized communities. For over a decade as an educator, he facilitated race, gender, and economic inequality conversations that focused on humanizing experiences between privileged and minoritized individuals and groups. He strives to create replicable and durable systems that promote value-driven organizational transparency and individual dignity. Ned received his MBA in Sustainable Management from the Presidio Graduate School in 2013 and B.S. in Math and Physics with a minor in Environmental Studies from the University of Puget Sound in 2004.