Capitol Spotlight: CFA Executive Director Janeth Rodriguez

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when Janeth Rodriguez started on the path that led her to become the new executive director of the California Faculty Association. Even she hesitated when she was asked to tell her story.

Does it begin in 2018, when she became a field representative for the union of 29,000 professors, lecturers and counselors who work within the California State University system? Or does it begin in her previous job, with the SEIU Local 1000, where she realized the power of labor and her own deep connection to it?

Or perhaps it begins during her time at Sac State, where she not only saw the transformative power of education, but also had a life-changing internship at Student Action with Farmworkers in North Carolina and became a U.S. citizen.

Like the stories of many immigrants to this country, hers has been a twisting one, full of not just struggle and poverty, but also caring mentors and fortuitous breaks that just made Rodriguez more appreciative of the good fortune she’s had.

“I consider myself not just lucky, but privileged,” said the 46-year-old mother of two who conceals a fierce thirst for social justice beneath a quiet, introverted exterior.

Rodriguez was born into poverty near the western coast of Mexico, in Sinaloa. Neither of her parents had graduated from high school. In the early 1980s, they crossed over the border in search of a better life and soon brought along Rodriguez and her older brother. They were all undocumented. Rodriguez was 4.

“I remember coming to the U.S. and not knowing the language,” she said. Like other immigrants, she said she had to learn English in kindergarten, in what she terms an inadequate public school system in Escalon, Calif., a small city east of Stockton. The upheaval to her young life “was quite traumatic,” she said.

Still, Rodriguez caught her first fortunate break with the enactment of the federal Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, approved under President Ronald Reagan, which allowed her and her family to transition from undocumented immigrants to documented ones.

“Obviously, I was young and didn’t really know what it meant,” she said.

At the time, she found herself waiting around in a lot of immigration offices and getting a new idea. Later, she understood the legislation opened up a whole new world of opportunity for her.

First, however, she had to make it through that poor K-12 system in what she views as a racist community that was prejudiced against immigrants and discouraged her from speaking Spanish.

In high school, Rodriguez said, her Spanish teacher wrote her a recommendation letter and encouraged her to start applying to college, a kindness she now believes helped her wrap her mind around the logistics of getting a higher education.

“Education can be one of those places that can be life changing….I know that because I’ve experienced that.”

In the late 1990s, Rodriguez moved to Sacramento to attend Sac State, where she was initially a business major pursuing a future in accounting. Her intentions changed, however, after the summer following her freshman year, when he did an internship with Student Action with Farmworkers near Durham, N.C.

Rodriguez said she thought she had grown up poor, but her eyes were opened working with laborers who pick tobacco. Part of her job involved her visiting migrant worker camps to translate for a health clinic and she was shocked at the deplorable conditions she saw – and the hate.

“I couldn’t believe the racism,” she said, noting that her roommate during that internship was a Black girl and that when they would go out together sometimes people would not speak to her roommate.

When she returned to Sacramento that fall, Rodriguez decided she couldn’t affect the kind of change she wanted to see in the world by summing columns of numbers. She switched to Communications Studies, graduating with her bachelor’s degree in 2002 and then immediately starting on a master’s that she finished four years later.

Also around the time she came to Sacramento, she decided she wanted the right to vote and began the process of becoming a naturalized citizen. During her junior year, in 2001, she became a U.S. citizen at a ceremony held at the Crest Theatre in downtown Sacramento.

Today, Rodriguez said she doesn’t take her right to vote lightly. “I make sure I’m civically engaged,” she said.

While she was finishing up her undergrad, Rodriguez started working for the California Association of Private Special Education Schools or CAPSES, which advocates for private special ed schools and the interests of children with disabilities.

Starting as an administrative assistant, in less than nine years she became the organization’s executive director and worked as a lobbyist. She found she loved helping people in need.

“I want to fight for folks who don’t really have much of a voice,” Rodriguez said.

In 2012, eager for a larger platform, Rodriguez took a job with SEIU Local 1000, where she got to witness firsthand the kind of impact labor actions could have on workers. She recalls being touched hearing that a raise would allow a worker to afford vegetables for their children.

As she thought more about labor, she came to realize that it had always been a part of her life. On her mother side of the family, she had relatives who were union members in Mexico and her mother had a much easier life thanks to her membership with the Teamsters as a tomato packer.

It was also during her time at SEIU that Rodriguez said she began to further develop her skills as a leader and hone her instincts as an advocate. When an opportunity to join the faculty association in 2018 she jumped at the chance, specifically because she was enthralled with the union’s unapologetic anti-racism and social justice mission.

She said she also liked the idea of supporting education.

I want to fight for folks who don’t really have much of a voice.

“Education can be one of those places that can be life changing,” Rodriguez said. “I know that because I’ve experienced that.”

Like her time with CAPSES, Rodriguez’s rise with CFA has been swift. She started as a field representative and then in 2023 became the Northern California organizing director, overseeing 11 people.

Then last year, she became interim general manager of the union, which at the time was the top job with the organization. In March, she was named the association’s new executive director, a title change Rodriguez said denotes that she has greater responsibility for planning for the future, not just putting out the latest fire.

“I thought she was the perfect person,” said Margarita Berta-Ávila, a Sac State education professor and the president of California Faculty Association.

Berta-Ávila started working closely with Rodriguez when she was the president of the Sac State chapter of CFA and Rodriguez was a field rep for the union. She said she was impressed by Rodriguez’s commitment to the union and its principles.

“Very thoughtful and measured as well as intentional in what we do,” is how Berta-Ávila describes Rodriguez, her “thought partner” in the leadership of the faculty association.

Miguel Cordova, a Title I education consultant with California Department of Education who got to know Rodriguez as a member leader of SEIU Local 1000, praised her for her long-term thinking, saying that union work is often dismissed as reactive, but needs people like Rodriguez who are charting the movement’s path five years into the future.

Indeed, he said Rodriguez presents a compelling picture as a labor leader thanks to her strategic mind and her personal story, which allows Rodriguez to speak from the heart about the transformative power of the social justice movement.

“She knows it because she’s been there,” he said.