• Menu
  • Skip to right header navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

Before Header

Donate

UC_iST_1c_Blue

Inquiry with impact

  • About
    • About Us
    • What is Social Transformation?
    • Meet the Team
    • Faculty Support
    • Impact Report
    • Partners
    • Help Us Grow
    • Contact Us
  • Research Initiatives
    • Current Initiatives
    • Past Initiatives
  • Funding Opportunities
    • Faculty Research
      • Catalyze Awards
      • Emerging Scholar Manuscript Workshops
      • Current Fellows
    • Experiential Learning
      • Building Belonging Program
      • — Building Belonging Projects and Fellows
      • Transforming Futures Program
      • — Transforming Futures Interns
  • Publications
    • Publications
    • Better World Books
    • Resource Guides
      • Voting Resources
      • Anti-racism and Criminal Justice Reform
      • Immigrant Rights and Immigration Reform
    • Video Library
    • Audio Library
    • Q&A with Changemakers
    • Journal of International Society and Culture
    • COVID-19 Response
  • News & Events
    • Featured News
    • Upcoming Events
    • — Past Events
    • — Past Conferences
  • About
    • About Us
    • What is Social Transformation?
    • Meet the Team
    • Faculty Support
    • Impact Report
    • Partners
    • Help Us Grow
    • Contact Us
  • Research Initiatives
    • Current Initiatives
    • Past Initiatives
  • Funding Opportunities
    • Faculty Research
      • Catalyze Awards
      • Emerging Scholar Manuscript Workshops
      • Current Fellows
    • Experiential Learning
      • Building Belonging Program
      • — Building Belonging Projects and Fellows
      • Transforming Futures Program
      • — Transforming Futures Interns
  • Publications
    • Publications
    • Better World Books
    • Resource Guides
      • Voting Resources
      • Anti-racism and Criminal Justice Reform
      • Immigrant Rights and Immigration Reform
    • Video Library
    • Audio Library
    • Q&A with Changemakers
    • Journal of International Society and Culture
    • COVID-19 Response
  • News & Events
    • Featured News
    • Upcoming Events
    • — Past Events
    • — Past Conferences

Mobile Menu

Donate
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube
Ned LeBlond

Ned LeBlond (he, him, his)

Managing Director

Ned LeBlond is the Managing 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 supports the conceptualization and design of all aspects of their equity focused research projects. To help these projects develop and thrive, Ned helps faculty strategically approach and compete for large, complex and interdisciplinary grants to support their vision.

He is a practiced leader and communicator who supports interdisciplinary teams in developing partnership and funding strategies that implement ambitious, yet achievable projects. Throughout his years at UCSC, he has nurtured and built a culture of collaboration across campus, while helping units adapt to new information and manage change. With the Genomics Institute, he helped projects negotiate growing funding needs while supporting leaders to identify purposeful tactics to fulfill their project aims on time. As one of the original hires in the Research Development unit, he played a pivotal role in establishing consistent and competitive grant support services across campus divisions. While within the Office of Research, Ned supported faculty to navigate bureaucracies and compete for large multidisciplinary funding competitions. His professional expertise is to help teams navigate interpersonal dynamics, clarify their project goals, subsequent approaches, and structure themselves purposefully. His experience in comprehensive forms of support, incubates collaborations through long-term planning and building strong and meaningful relationships to define interdisciplinary and convergent approaches that achieve more together.

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. This work has evolved into being an intrapreneur, by consistently nudging institutions to be equitable, just, and representative through everyday practice. He has consistently contributed to pathways development for potential BIPOC staff at various organizations. Ned received his MBA in Sustainable Management from the Presidio Graduate School in 2013 and B.S. in Math and Physics (minor in Environmental Studies) from the University of Puget Sound in 2004.

Contact info: 319-321-4356

nleblond@ucsc.edu

Footer

Hex_iST_orange (1)
  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube

Contact

Institute for Social Transformation
Division of Social Sciences
1156 High St.
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
email: transform@ucsc.edu

Resources

Anti-Racism
Immigration Reform
Faculty Resources

Newsletter

Sign up to receive the newsletter.

Site Footer

soc_sci_white
  • Accreditation
  • Non-Discrimination Policy
  • Land Acknowledgement
  • Privacy Policy & Terms of Use
  • Sexual Violence Prevention & Response

Copyright © 2025 UCSC Institute for Social Transformation · All Rights Reserved