Before joining higher education, Veronica served as a non-profit leader in San Diego. In her previous roles, she led operations, strategic oversight, and social service programs focused on low-income and underserved communities to enhance family support and stability efforts. Her leadership contributed to multi-stakeholder collaborations with local and national advocates to bring about systems-level change to address childhood obesity, social-emotional development in early education, and inclusion of children and teens with developmental disabilities.  Veronica received a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Utah and a Master’s in Public Administration from San Diego State University.