Mandy Bratton

Executive Director and Lecturer

Dr. Mandy Bratton serves as the Executive Director of the UC San Diego Center for Global Sustainable Development. The Center is home to the award-winning Global Ties program and the National Academy of Engineering's (NAE) Global Changemaker Scholars Program. These programs inspire students to collaborate with communities to co-create innovative solutions to urgent problems, such as those represented by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the NAE Grand Challenges. Mandy also serves as a Founding Director of the UC San Diego Changemaker Institute. She is an Ashoka U Change Leader and was instrumental in making UC San Diego an Ashoka U Changemaker Campus – one of only 45 worldwide. She served as the Principal Investigator for SISTERS, a National Science Foundation-funded project to design and study the impact of an after-school STEAM program for 5th and 6th-grade girls facilitated by undergraduate mentors majoring in STEM. Before coming to UC San Diego, Mandy earned a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin and served as a senior faculty member in Psychology and Human Development and Interim Associate Dean at Prescott College for the Liberal Arts, the Environment, and Social Justice. She also earned a Public Leadership Credential from the JFK School of Government at Harvard University. Mandy has sailed around the world three times with the Semester at Sea Global Studies Program and serves as president emeritus of its alumni association and as an ex officio member of its Board of Trustees. She holds an academic appointment as a Continuing Lecturer. Her primary interests as a scholar, teacher, practitioner, and global citizen include sustainable development, gender, leadership, ethics, and advancing social and environmental justice.

Barb Donovan

Student Services Advisor and Program Specialist

Barb has been with the Global TIES program for over ten years. She works with all academic departments across campus advising how ENG100D and ENG100L work with technical electives for most majors.  She also handles the operational side of the house which includes building the schedule for all classes, enrollment management, managing the lab, handling all reimbursements and team purchases as well as travel. With the addition of the Global Changemaker Scholars Program and the Center for Global Sustainable Development, she will also be managing the social media and website development for these new groups.  GCSP and CGSD seek to inspire students to collaborate with communities to co-create innovative solutions to urgent problems, such as those represented by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the NAE Grand Challenges. 

Barb, who has a Masters Degree in Education, has worked with UC San Diego for ten years.  Her other roles were within Engineering Student Services as a Student Recruitment Officer and a COSMOS Teacher Fellow. She enjoys cycling, body boarding and yoga and used to own a small ice cream business across from campus named Lil' Dipper.

Anh-Thu Ngo

Lecturer

Anh-Thu Ngo, Ph.D., is a Lecturer with Global TIES. She became involved with service learning as a college student through Princeton University’s Community-Based Learning Initiative. She studied Anthropology, which has been a natural conduit for direct community-based research and learning. After college, she participated in a six-week, hands-on irrigation project with Engineers Without Borders in rural Arsi Negele in southeastern Ethiopia. She then earned her doctorate at Harvard University in Social Anthropology, where she conducted field research as a Fulbright grantee in Vietnam. While a graduate student, she was a teaching assistant for Dr. Paul Farmer’s popular undergraduate course on Global Health and later developed her own at The College of New Jersey. She has worked with a variety of education nonprofits and has sustained engagement with the public interest sector. Anh-Thu is a transplant to California from the New York metro area.

Mandy Bratton

Projects

One Village Philippines, Schoolhouse Ghana, and Diabeatit

Contact

mbratton@ucsd.edu

Mauricio Oliveira

Project

Cruz Rojas

Contact

mauricio@ucsd.edu

Ahmad Shaikh

#1 Turkey Carver

Ahmad is a Bioengineering graduate student. He is a mechanical engineer who aims to specialize in cardiovascular biomechanics and medical devices.
Ahmad believes creating avenues and support systems to create change is the key to a better tomorrow.
With this goal, he joined Globalties as a TA, working to support those who bring about change.
In his free time, Ahmad enjoys hikes, soccer and a good challenge. 

Jenny Tseng

Samira Feili