Linda K. Andrews, M.S., received her advanced degree from St. Mary’s College in Moraga and her B.A. in social sciences, with a secondary education credential, from San Jose State University. For the past seven years she has served as the Continuing Educational Specialist and Director for the Business and Management Department at UC Santa Cruz Extension. During this tenure, she has created cutting edge programs including the Management Institute of Leadership Excellence (MILE) and the Executive Women’s Institute (EWI). Prior to this, she worked at a start-up company as the Manager of Contracts and at Applied Materials, where she was the Senior Contracts Administrator. She has taught at De Anza College for 14 years and has two community college lifetime teaching credentials.
Sean Nihalani D.Sc., is the Director of the Engineering and Technologies Department at UCSC Extension in Silicon Valley. Dr. Nihalani has designed, presented and managed engineering, IT, and management courses at many universities and corporations. His 18 years of experience includes design, development, troubleshooting of LANs, WANs, hardware, software, network security and databases, as well as managing various engineering, IT, and financial projects.
Michelle M. Ragozzino, Ph.D. received her B.S. in biology from U.C. Irvine and her doctorate in molecular and cell biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where her research focused on cancer biology. She completed postdoctoral work at Tufts University.
In January of 2004, Michelle assumed the role of Continuing Education Specialist and Director of the Applied and Natural Science Department at U.C. Santa Cruz Extension in Silicon Valley. In this capacity, she is responsible for planning the biotechnology, bioinformatics, clinical trials and environmental health and safety curricula for diverse audiences of adult learners. For the six years prior to accepting this position, Michelle was the Director of the Basic Science and Biopharmaceutical Studies program at UC Berkeley Extension.
Michelle also served for several years as the Administrator and Associate Project Director at the Bay Area Bioscience Center, a non-profit organization founded to foster the biotechnology industry in Northern California, where she worked on several studies examining the biotechnology industry in the Bay Area.
