Zeke Chaidez: Eye on the Ball Zeke Chaidez is the vice president of business for Club Deportivo Chivas USA, the Major League Soccer team that calls The Home Depot Center home. Working a stone’s throw from his alma mater, Chaidez looks back on a career that began before he graduated from CSUDH, when he worked as a sales executive for the Hispanic Broadcasting Corporation (now Univision Radio).

Darryl McKellar: Onstage in the Classroom Darryl McKellar is an English teacher at Henry Clay Middle School in Los Angeles and an aspiring actor. In February, he was nominated as best actor for the NAACP Theatre Awards for his performance in “The Piano Lesson," competing against Lawrence Fishburne and Ted Lange. Although he did not win in the category, McKellar says it was gratifying to be in such illustrious company. Dateline visited him in front of probably one of his toughest audiences, an English class at HCMS, where he shares his mission to encourage inner city students to look forward to college, the similarities between teaching and acting, and how to give confidence to teach eighth-graders to laugh at themselves.

Photo above: Deborah Thomas (Class of ’95, M.A., behavioral science/negotiation and conflict management) was honored at the 9th Annual Networking Conference of the CSUDH Negotiation, Conflict Resolution, and Peacebuilding (NCRP) Affinity Association. She, along with the Hon. Alexander H. Williams III, Los Angeles County Superior Court judge, received the A.M. Turk Award, which is named for A. Marco Turk (pictured above with Thomas), professor and director of the NCRP Program.

Thomas is a private mediator, consultant, trainer and NCRP adjunct faculty member at CSUDH. She is currently the chair of the Beverly Hills Bar Association’s Community and Peer Mediation Committee. She has provided counseling services throughout Los Angeles County, including assistance to families in crisis during the 1994 Northridge earthquake. She is currently working with victims of Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi, in a mediation program for residents who are still without basic services. Photo by Joanie Harmon-Whetmore