Meet Andrea
Andrea's career has been grounded in service.
Andrea Sorce began her career in K-12 education and has served internationally and managed programs for multiple nonprofits. She currently works as a Professor of Economics at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill.
Andrea met her husband, Slater, in the Peace Corps, where they both served in Honduras and El Salvador as economic development specialists, advising small businesses and agricultural cooperatives. They connected over shared values of integrity, service, and community.
After pursuing graduate degrees in Public Administration, they fell in love with Vallejo and purchased their first home in Glen Cove, where they live with their rescue dog and cats.
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In Vallejo, Andrea has taken leadership roles on pressing issues facing our community.
As a founder and co-chair of the ACLU Solano County Chapter, Andrea has fought locally for housing justice, first amendment protections, public safety and police reform. She advocated for the creation of Vallejo's Surveillance Advisory Board (SAB), on which she serves as Chair. Andrea also serves as Vice Chair of the United Democrats of Southern Solano County and as a board member of the Glen Cove Community Association.
In addition, Andrea has volunteered with survivors of domestic violence, provided legal support to Central American asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border, fostered kittens with the Humane Society of the North Bay, coached a Girls on the Run team at Pennycook Elementary, and mentored community college students through Year Up and the Puente project. For five years, she facilitated leadership development programs for New Politics Leadership Academy, a nonprofit organization with the mission of engaging more service alums, both military and civilian, in politics.
Grounded by her family's story and values, Andrea is passionate about economic justice and upward mobility.
Andrea's grandfather served in the Navy in WWII and spent his career as a union tradesman with Chrysler. Through these opportunities, her grandparents were able to build their first home from the ground up, and her father worked to pay his way through college and become the first in the family to graduate.
As a beneficiary of the American Dream, Andrea has devoted her career to ensuring that families today have access to the opportunities for upward mobility that her family had. She believes firmly that economic growth and development must be inclusive of everyone in a community. As a union member and granddaughter of a UAW member, Andrea understands the importance of supporting workers and their families, and creating sustainable living-wage jobs in Vallejo, for Vallejoans.
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Andrea has a track record of bringing people together to get results.
As a community college faculty member, Andrea works to support students from all backgrounds towards their educational goals. She teaches Principles of Economics, Economics of Public Issues and Economic Justice courses. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, Andrea serves as a department chair, an elected representative on DVC's Academic Senate Council, and co-coordinator of the college's Open Educational Resources (OER) initiative. Through her OER work, she has helped secure and manage nearly $2 million in federal and state grant funding to reduce textbook costs for students, saving DVC students over $500,000 each semester.
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During her Peace Corps service, Andrea focused on financial education and entrepreneurship, developing curricula for youth and adults and leading trainings for hundreds of farmers, small businesses, and women's groups. She assisted with the creation of multiple lending institutions which provided seed capital to entrepreneurs in the areas of agriculture, hospitality, and the building trades.
Prior to moving to Vallejo, Andrea managed economic empowerment programming for refugees and low-income families with the International Rescue Committee in San Diego, including financial literacy, microenterprise, lending, and tax preparation programs. She managed a diverse staff and grant portfolio from federal, local and private funders. While in that role, she built strong collaborative relationships with a range of external partners and led collective action projects as Co-Chair of the San Diego Family Asset Building Coalition and an appointed member of the San Diego City-County Reinvestment Task Force. She frequently partnered with the City of San Diego's economic development department and was part the city's Promise Zone workgroup focused on increasing economic activity in underserved areas.
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Originally from North Carolina, Andrea earned a BA in Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Master in Public Administration from Harvard, where she was the recipient of a public service fellowship.
