Alumni & Partners

You can browse each profile by clicking on their name.

David A. Hjorth, ChFC, CLU

David Hjorth came to Cal Poly Pomona initially as a baseball player under the tutelage of Coach John Scolinos. Since his graduation in 1970, David has moved from the outfield to the front lines of the world of financial planning as Founder and President of D.H. Financial Consulting, INC.

David works primarily with owners of privately held and family owned businesses in the areas of estate distribution, investment strategies, business succession planning, charitable and various tax reduction strategies. He has used his Cal Poly Pomona education, and his subsequent training as a Chartered Financial Consultant and Chartered Life Underwriter, to help hundreds of owners take action and plan for themselves and their families.

David's professional affiliations include International Association for Financial Planning, the National Association of Security Dealers, the American Society of Chartered Life Underwriters and the Advanced Association of Life Underwriters, Washington, DC. David is a Life and Qualifying member of the Million Dollar Round Table, and on a number of occasions has qualified for Top of the Table. This year, he is President of the Agents Advisory Council, representing 8,000 Financial Advisors across the nation.

David and his wife, Mary, who is a Cal Poly Pomona alumna (1972), are very active in the Upland, CA community. David is a past member of the San Antonio Community Hospital Foundation Board of Directors. In addition, he and his family have established the David and Mary Hjorth Family Endowment Fund through the Community Foundation of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties. The main purpose of the fund is to grant college scholarships to graduating seniors.

Michael J. Bidart

A partner with the law firm of Shernoff, Bidart & Darras in Claremont, Michael J. Bidart is acknowledged as one of the top practitioners of HMO litigation in the country. He achieved a landmark $120.5 million verdict on behalf of his client in Goodrich v. Aetna (1999). Bidart has also argued and won crucial law-making decisions totaling more than $300 million for victims of the Northridge earthquake. His determination to combat immense corporations is perhaps unusual for a farm boy from Chino, but his ethical acuity was nurtured by professors in Cal Poly Pomona’s economics department.

“All of the professors, especially Drs. Blumner and Galbraith, became trusted friends as well as teachers,” says Bidart. “I see them as honorable mentors who went out of their way to instill academic principles as well as to offer active friendship to a wet-behind-theears freshman.”Bidart’s career is marked by his tireless support of citizen’s rights. He was instrumental in forcing the California Public Employees Retirement System to increase its healthcare benefits for female breast cancer victims and is currently battling insurance carriers on behalf of those who were displaced by recent California wildfires.“Representing victims of corporate abuse is a risk, but it is one that I am always willing to take,” says Bidart. “I never represent insurance companies, but concentrate on serving the best needs of all citizens, making sure they are protected from insurance fraud and dangerous medical practices.”

Bidart and his wife, Jeanette, were recently honored at the University of La Verne for their contributions toward the establishment of the Michael and Jeanette Bidart Moot Court Room. In addition, Bidart is on the Loyola Marymount University Board of Regents and the Consumer Attorneys of California. In 2002, he established two President’s Council scholarships at Cal Poly Pomona in honor of his parents. Bidart was named a Super Lawyer of 2004 by Law & Politics Magazine and Los Angeles Magazine.

Ivan Misner

Dr. Ivan Misner recently visited Cal Poly Pomona as the inaugural speaker at the University Advancement Division's "Lunch with a Leader" program. A knowledgeable and entertaining presenter, Ivan shared with the division some tips in a lecture called "Networking for Cave Dwellers."

Ivan is the Founder and CEO of Business Network International, which was founded in 1985 and now has almost 2,400 chapters throughout North America, Europe, Australia, Asia and Africa. Last year alone, BNI generated over 2.1 million referrals resulting in over $727 million dollars worth of business for its members.

A graduate of the department of political science at Cal Poly Pomona, Ivan completed his graduate work at USC. He is the author of 5 books (including the New York Times best seller Masters of Networking) and is a monthly contributor to the Expert Section of Entrepreneur.com. In July, his article, "Word-of-Mouth: The World's Best Known Marketing Secret, is on the home page of Entrepreneur.com. After that, it will be archived in the Marketing Section.

In addition to his work with BNI, Ivan is on the Board of Directors for the Haynes Children Center and is the Founder of the BNI-Misner Charitable Foundation. He lives with his wife Elisabeth and their three children in La Verne, California. In his "spare time," Ivan is an amateur magician and a black belt in karate.

Jill Escoto

Visitors to Jill Escoto's office at California Expanded Metal Products are greeted by the large and familiar black and white photographic poster of hard-working women, confidently perched above the city on a steel girder. The caption reads, "Women on the Rise!" This is an appropriate introduction to Jill, the dynamic and energetic Credit Manager at CEMCO. Jill, a Communication alumna, is first person to occupy this position at CEMCO, and she is the only woman in upper management in the company.

After graduating from Cal Poly Pomona, Jill worked for many years as Director of Member Services/Co-Executive Director at the Pasadena Downtown YMCA. In 1989, she was hired as a Senior Credit Representative at United States Gypsum Company, where she was responsible for customer relations and collections in California, Hawaii and surrounding states. In 1996, Jill joined CEMCO, and has helped to increase company sales from $40 million to $75 million a year, while minimizing the company's
write-off to bad debt.

Jill looks back fondly upon her years at Cal Poly Pomona, which she says taught her how to think outside the box. "I enjoyed having professors with real world experience," she said.

Jill, who lives in Glendora, is married and has two daughters, Sarah and Heather. She looks forward to participating in Professor for a Day in October.

Windie Scott

It wasn't until Windie Scott was pulled out of her segregated Catholic school to integrate an all-white Catholic school in Biloxi, Miss., that the eighth-grader began to personally understand sorrow.

It was 1967, and the state of Mississippi was still dragging its heels integrating its public schools. However, the NAACP and the local diocese in Biloxi stepped out front to educate some of the city's white and black students together.

Nearly 13 years earlier, on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court declared unanimously in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education that separate educational facilities are "inherently unequal" and, as such, violate the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees all citizens equal protection of the laws. But most children across Mississippi and other states in the South attended segregated schools until the late 1960s.

"The Catholic schools were the first to integrate on the (Mississippi) Gulf Coast, and the NAACP officials came to my school to select three girls to integrate Sacred Heart Academy," says Scott, who is now vice president of the State Bar of California and deputy to State Controller Steve Westly.

Scott's father initially opposed her controversial move to Sacred Heart, an all-girls school. However, Biloxi no longer had a black Catholic high school and Scott's mother, wanting her to continue her Catholic education, warmed to the idea.

Both Scott's mother and grandmother had attended parochial schools, but they were for black students only.

"My old school, Our Mother of Sorrows, was a school run by a vocational order of nuns who were dedicated to teaching Negroes and Indians," Scott says.

There was no such mandate at Sacred Heart. Still, Scott agreed to go, convinced that she was helping change the South for the better.

She joined the school's marching band.

"I didn't realize that I was opening up a can of worms by joining such a public band and showing the community that they had 'lost' to integration," she says.

The band had played at President Lyndon B. Johnson's inauguration and was known as the "Toast of the South," Scott says.

When the word spread that band had a black member, engagements were canceled and some band members grew even more resentful of Scott's presence.

Such incidents, though jolting, were not unexpected, Scott says. She was no stranger to segregation, although her parents tried to shield her from some of its harsher realities.

An early lesson came when she asked to go to the beach playground two blocks from her home.

"I remember that my father pulled the car over to the side and cried," she recalls. "Then he said, 'Baby, you can't go to the beach because you are colored.'"

Scott's father had a master's degree in chemistry and was a meteorologist working at Keisler Air Force Base. "He had good jobs but became increasingly frustrated at the limitations he faced because of his race," she says. "He worked hard and had done everything right and still couldn't give his family what he wanted."

Windie Scott was willing to sacrifice her comfort for change.

"I thought I was doing the right thing," she says. Still, the treatment she received at Sacred Heart was painful and bewildering.

"The changes were hard for black and white kids, especially those predisposed to hate," she says.

She was even shut out of the circle that the girls formed to say their prayers before each game.

"They wouldn't let me in, so I just sat to the side," she says. "But I was doing my own prayers, and I was praying real hard for my safety."

Although she believes in the principles behind desegregation, Scott says some important things were left behind in all-black schools.

"We may have had used books and old facilities, but we were nurtured and we were taught about black history, black accomplishments that gave us pride in ourselves."

There was pride in Scott's segregated roots.

Her parents met while students at Tuskegee Institute, a black college founded by Booker T. Washington.

"My parents played bridge every week with doctors and other respected members of the black community," Scott says. "My parents and their friends couldn't go to the hotels and beaches, but they had their own society and institutions. And it was not something to sneeze at."

The Brown decision was shaking up those institutions. Scott's own mother was sent to teach at a white school and it "broke her heart," Scott says.

"My mother loved little black children. She was the epitome of the black teacher. It was nothing for her to go to the homes of her students and talk to their parents. You didn't have much of that in the white schools that black students were forced to attend."

During her sophomore year at Sacred Heart, Scott started feeling that she was making some inroads. Her father, however, was disheartened by the racial animus in the South and was looking for employment elsewhere.

"The murder of Dr. King was the last straw," Scott says. "I was in class when a nun came over the public announcement system and said; 'We have to pray for colored people not to start any trouble.'"

Furious, Scott walked out of the school and didn't return for several days.

Younger sister April Scott-Goss recalls her sister telling her how she didn't go to school for days.

"I remember thinking that was really cool. I questioned her about it and she told me what happened," Scott-Goss says.

In her last year of graduate school in 1999, Scott-Goss decided to make a short film about her sister's experiences integrating Sacred Heart.

The 33-minute film, "Deep in My Heart," chronicles the impact of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination on the Scott family. It has won several awards and been shown twice in different categories at the Cannes Film Festival.

"I admire my sister so," says Scott-Goss. "I think it is so interesting that she doesn't think that she played a part in the civil rights movement. It was a powerful thing that she went through during that tumultuous time."

Three months after King's assassination in 1968, Scott's father moved his family to California.

Again, Scott was conflicted about leaving the familiar.

"I could see the wave of change coming as people got to know me," she says. "I had gone through all of this stuff and three black girls were coming the next year to join the band. I wanted to finish, but my dad was getting me out of that situation.

"That experience at Sacred Heart showed me the power of diversity and it also made me feel stronger in my own culture and realize that I was giving the white students as much as they were giving me."

After moving to California, Scott says, she found the handful of black students at the all-girls Catholic school in Pomona she attended either unaware of or apathetic to racism.

"I felt like I had been robbed of activism," she says. Scott became heavily involved in speechwriting and debate competitions.

"Black students in California didn't know about the accomplishments of black people throughout history," she says. "That was an extremely important part of the curriculum in black schools. In California, they only taught about slavery and Frederick Douglass."

Soon, she was winning competitions throughout the state, many speeches focusing on African American achievements.

Her analytical and oratorical skills led her to undergraduate school at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. After graduating in 1974, she entered law school at the University of California, Davis, where she was the only black female student in her class.

Among Scott's accomplishment are a long list of firsts: the first black woman to become president of the Women Lawyers of Sacramento; the first black woman to become president of the Sacramento County Bar Association.

Now as vice president on the Board of Governors of the State Bar, representing some 12,000 lawyers in her district, Scott is vying to be president of the State Bar.

Her opponents include, among others, former California attorney general John Van de Kamp.

When asked why she would undertake such a challenge, she smiles sweetly.

"Because I can," she says. "Because I can."

 

Jennifer Leong

For Jennifer Leong, a longtime animal lover, the pit bull she adopted in art school was not an unusual birthday present. But it's one that changed her. Since Leong, a former Temecula resident, adopted Grimis, she started creating allegorical portraits of animals.

The 29-year-old began by painting Grimis, her 97-pound red brindle pit bull she calls goofy and communicative. Her animal portraits, sophisticated, empathetic, complex and technically beautiful, caught the attention of the art world.

They also helped her land a prestigious assignment as an artist for the Harry Potter franchise. This summer, Leong's illustrations will come out on the popular boy-wizard products, to coincide with the movie release of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," due out next month.

Leong, a 1992 Temecula Valley High School graduate who now lives in Pasadena, said she couldn't reveal too much about her work for Warner Bros. From April 2003 through the first of this year, Leong was consumed with the assignment, using oil paints and the computer to illustrate the film's animal and human characters.

It is the type of assignment a more seasoned artist would more likely snag, say those in the art world. Leong, however, got the assignment a few months out of art school.

"Usually you have to do more behind-the-scenes things, prove yourself, work your way into that," said Kit Baron, vice president of admissions at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, from which Leong graduated in 2002.

It would be wrong to characterize the work as a break because that implies luck, Baron said. Leong is hard-working and determined, say those who know her.

A turning point

Leong has always showed aptitude in her art, her parents, Madonna and Terrance Leong said. When Leong was 5, her parents enrolled her in an art class with her older sister.

"Jennifer's for some reason, you look at it, and it's a little bit more appealing," Madonna Leong said of her younger daughter's pictures. "It's the exact same painting, but they don't look exactly the same."

Leong is one of four siblings, all of whom graduated from Temecula Valley High School. Her father is a chiropractor in town and her mother works at the business.

Although she didn't take many art classes growing up, Leong was always drawing or painting, and most often her subjects were animals. "Growing up, the stray dogs followed her home," Madonna Leong said. "For some reason she's a magnet for animals. They love her."

When Leong was about 9, she wanted a horse. "We ignored it," Madonna Leong said. After school, she would walk to a nearby ranch and muck stalls in exchange for riding lessons.

One year, Leong's parents asked her what she wanted for her birthday. She knew there was a horse store in Fallbrook, Madonna Leong said, and asked for an English riding hat and boots.

"She knew they were having a sale," Madonna Leong said.

By the time she was 11, Leong had saved enough money and bought a horse.

In high school, Leong said she knew she wanted to go to Art Center, one of the best schools for the study of art in the country. But a career as an artist didn't seem practical. The tuition was expensive, more than $10,000 a semester, and she wondered what sort of career opportunities were available.

Instead of art school, Leong attended Cal Poly Pomona and studied advertising. "That wasn't really satisfying," she said. For so many years she had been thinking about art. Because of that, "Everything else felt like it was second choice."

On Fridays, she would drive back to Temecula to spend the weekend working at Thornton Winery to help pay for school. One day she was having lunch with two friends, asking them for career advice, thinking art school was too expensive. Through tears, she asked, "What am I going to do with my life?"

"If you don't do it," her friends told her, "it's a waste."

An unexpected portrait

Leong entered Art Center in 1999 to study illustration. She gave up her life to study art, she said. It was an enormous commitment, both financially and emotionally.

"At Art Center, you never sleep," Leong wrote in an e-mail. "I felt myself physically aging and you pretty much sacrifice everything else in your life and let and art concept take over."

She was busy with school and living in a studio apartment. When her boyfriend asked what she wanted for her birthday, she asked for a dog. They went to the pound. At the back, in the "dreaded" pit bull section, she found Grimis, 5 months old with scabby stumps for ears. He was going to be euthanized. Her first reaction, she said, was one of disgust. Instead of showing aggression, however, Grimis showed sweetness.

"There was some kind of connection," she said.

She calls her dog a "big baby," prone to making faces, who loves people and other animals.

It was the first time she had been inside an animal shelter. She felt desperate to get him out and contacted a pit bull rescue group. Since rescuing Grimis, Leong has fostered about a half-dozen other dogs, rehabilitating and training them before adopting them out.

Her love of animals and concern for their welfare fuels her artwork. In art school, Leong found herself painting Grimis, but she wondered if it would limit her artistically.

"I found myself steering away from it (animal portraiture)," she said. "I felt like I should explore."

But her paintings earned her wall space in the school's art gallery and scholarships.

"When I paint animals, that's what everyone gravitates to more," she said.

In addition to animals, Leong creates multidimensional pieces out of wood, decoupage and other materials, does graphic design and paints people. It's the animal paintings that seem to get the most attention.

History, personality

Baron, the Art Center admissions officer, couldn't stop looking at a portrait hanging in the school's gallery that Leong did of a pit bull surrounded by broken mannequin legs. She bought it and later commissioned a painting of her cat.

In her 25 years in the art college world, Baron said Leong is one of the most technically gifted artists she has ever met. Leong is a beautiful painter, Baron said, but her paintings go beyond mastering technique. Leong captures both the history and personality of the animal and the relationship with its owner, with color, light and symbolism.

"I have never seen anybody do work like this," Baron said. "It's just so unique. Very often animals can be kind of corny. In the art world, they're not regarded as an important kind of art but she lifts that to a whole other level. It isn't just a likeness of another animal. She is putting so much into it."

In the pit bull painting Baron bought, Leong painted the dog with a sad, but attentive, look standing in a landscape of broken female mannequin legs. On one hand, Leong said, the viewer might think the picture is emblematic of the dog's aggression. Leong included the legs to illustrate the dog's history. It was an abandoned dog. The legs show that the canine was disposable, tossed out with the trash. The moody sky reflects the dog's aggressive personality and the curvaceous legs, the dog's feminine side ---- she is petite, clean and prances when she walks, Leong said.

The symbolism makes for a more interesting painting for her. And "it makes the painting more interesting and meaningful for the owner," Leong said.

When she paints a portrait, Leong spends time getting to know the animal and its owner. Pet owners tend to talk about their animals as "cute" and "happy," but Leong gets them to talk about their histories. She spends time with the animals, observing, playing, taking natural photos and looking through family albums.

"I have a lot of empathy for people and living things and am interested in knowing them on a personal and truthful level ---- what makes them tick," Leong wrote in an e-mail. "I'm interested in their stories and experiences, and unspoken relationships that are only seen through patient and perceptive observation."

In her one-bedroom house, the living room doubles as her studio and there is a painting in progress of a dog mounted on the wall next to an open window. She shares the house with her boyfriend, her dog, a parrot, several finches and three lovebirds.

She wears a silver Tiffany's dog collar around her neck and a baseball T-shirt with the slogan, "My best friend is a pit bull." Grimis repeatedly saunters into the room and climbs on the futon while her finches chirp in the background.

Leong is thinking about returning to Temecula to teach art to children. There were few opportunities here when she was growing up. She would like to teach classes that let children gravitate toward the type of art at which they would excel, rather than complete a set lesson. She is also putting together a Web site, www. jenniferleong.com, and plans to allow clients to donate a portion of their purchases to animal rights groups.

"A lot of artists can be somewhat introverted and self-involved," Baron said. "She cares so much about making people happy with her work."

Laurie Miller ‘81, kinesiology, is a teacher at Moreno Elementary School in Montclair, CA. She was recently the recipient of the Adapted Physical Education Teacher of the Year award for the state of California. In 1984, she received her master’s degree in kinesiology from Cal Poly Pomona.

Steve Gomez ’84, kinesiology, is head baseball coach for Citrus College. In 1983, he pitched for Cal Poly’s national-championship baseball team and then spent six seasons in the minor leagues. Steve also received his master’s degree in kinesiology from Cal Poly Pomona in1995. He lives in La Verne, CA.

Kris Mohandie ‘84, behavioral science, is a police and forensic psychologist.

Linda Heidtke ’94, communication, is director of university relations at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, CA.

Dan Alexander ’03, public relations, is a director of business development. He married Rachel Santuci ’03, marketing, at Arrowhead Lake Resort on September 4, 2004. Rachel is a programs and marketing manager.

Ken Willis ’73, history, is a city council member in Upland, CA. Councilmember Willis serves as Mayor Pro Tem, Chairman of the Public Works Committee and a member of Police & Fire Committee. He and his wife, Jane, live in Upland, CA; they have a daughter.

Maria Wootton ’74, English, is a Spanish teacher at Claremont High School. She and her husband have three sons and two grandchildren.

Hilda Solis ’80, political science, is a congresswoman for California’s 32 nd Congressional District. She and her husband reside in El Monte, CA.

Dan Haden ’81, history, is government and economics teacher and Bonita High School in La Verne, CA. He is also a city council member for the city of La Verne, where he lives with his wife; they have two children.

Mark S. Erickson ’83, history, is retired from a 25 year career with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

Jeff Coulter ’92, communication, is director of public relations at the Michigan Institute for Health Enhancement, a health and wellness firm serving physicians, health plans, and employer groups in southeast Michigan.

Karen Jack ’94, American studies, is a special education teacher at Chaparral Elementary School in Claremont, CA.

Natalie Wright ’97, English, is a teacher a Claremont High School. She lives in Monrovia, CA with her parents and siblings.

Mary Gresswell ’00, sports medicine, is a physical therapist at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center in Pomona, CA. She is recently engaged to Kevin Butscher ’00, computer info systems, also Cal Poly Pomona graduate. They plan to marry in September 2005.

Claudia Reis ’04, music, is a music education teacher in the elementary school music program throughout Claremont, CA schools.

In Memoriam

Alan F. Chapman ‘70, social sciences, July 2004