Geida Cleveland Is Centered on Community

As far back as she can remember, Geida Cleveland has relied on a sense of community. It started in her hometown of Nogales, Mexico, when her mother became seriously ill. With her father working in a distribution center across the border in Nogales, Arizona, to support them and work toward citizenship, it took a village to provide care.

A network of family, friends, and neighbors stepped in to help Cleveland and her two older brothers. By age eight, her mother was gone. That left her father to stitch together a combination of his visits and community caregiving until he could fully reunite with his children.

“This was probably the foundation of realizing that although you could be in a very lonely situation, there was always someone around, someone to ask,” Cleveland says.

That formative experience, and others, fed her education, ambition, and career. At Minnesota Carlson, Cleveland has dedicated her work to building a community where students feel they belong, and her efforts continue to grow as she’s recently stepped into a new role as the school’s executive director of wellbeing, empowerment, and belonging.

Creating Community

The opportunity in front of her, and the school, rests on fostering a community where agile leaders can harness business expertise and insight to improve the world. The intersection of wellbeing, empowerment, and belonging brings focus on three equally important areas that each play a distinct role in creating that community. Through new programming, partnerships, and approaches, Cleveland—who brings more than a decade of experience working in higher education, including five years in Carlson’s Undergraduate Program—aims to create a consistent employee experience for faculty and staff, and to support students in all programs in the school.

“For the first time, we have one position thinking about these areas together,” says Dean Jamie Prenkert, who personally wrote the description for this new role and hired Cleveland. “What Geida brings is the know-how to create this kind of community, and a positive, optimistic attitude.”

Overcoming Culture Shock

That attitude has certainly been tested. At age 12, Cleveland and her brothers moved with their father to Lakeville, Minnesota, where an aunt already lived. 

“I didn’t know English. I had never seen snow in my life,” she says of the culture shock. She tried to fit in, but it was not easy. After graduating from Prior Lake High School, she enrolled at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities to pursue her undergraduate degree in human resource development, leadership, and communications studies. It was here that she began to feel a sense of belonging after seeking out other Latino students. “I had to figure out how to go back to my identity,” she explains. “I had tried to assimilate too much. It was a survival mechanism.”

Building Bridges

Cleveland says as she settled into college, she realized she had an opportunity to change the system for students like her. “I decided to work at the University because it is rooted in systems not created for people like me. But the U gave me an opportunity to come back to who I am. I want to be that person who helps younger generations feel the same way.”

She knew she wanted to help students feel more at home while getting the education they needed to change the trajectories of their lives. It began in 2009 when she was hired at the University as an admissions counselor and Latino recruitment coordinator. That’s also when she first met and worked with Eric Ly, who is now the Minnesota Carlson director of enrollment and belonging for the Undergraduate Program. Ly says they immediately connected over shared life experiences. “There’s an unspoken connection you have when you come from marginalized communities and a shared sense of struggle,” he says. He was struck by Cleveland’s willingness to do any job, including scrubbing some mis-chalked signage off the sidewalk at the end of a long day.

“She will never tell you to do something she is not willing to do herself,” he says. “That’s the kind of person she is: She won’t just tell you what to do. She will do it alongside you.”

Championing Belonging

By 2022, Cleveland led a team in Minnesota Carlson’s Undergraduate Program responsible for building pathways to college and creating a supportive environment for students. Ly says her clarity of purpose and courageous leadership have been integral to her success.

“We talk about it a lot: The courage of waking up and saying, ‘I’m going to try again,’” Ly says.

“But courage is also sometimes about being strategic. She thinks in terms of win-win for people,” he adds. “That is, ‘How do we win for students, but also in a way where everybody feels satisfied in that process?’ To see the long-term ‘This is great for us,’ that courage of trying again, and her background is really powerful.”

Cleveland says that perseverance has led to some of her proudest moments. One is the launch of the Maroon Lobby, an inclusive space at Minnesota Carlson that allows students to gather, study, and otherwise take off any masks they wear during the day and be their authentic selves. Creating a welcoming space is crucial for the student experience and academic success, especially for those who typically don’t see themselves reflected in traditional business environments. Space at the bustling Big 10 university is always at a premium; landing it was a huge get.

“I don’t feel there’s one thing I did that did it. It was the asking, asking, asking,” Cleveland says. “That pebble’s ripple effect kept going, and it finally got big enough.”

Same goes for the Take What You Need Closet, stocked with donations from the school and others—toiletries, snacks, groceries, and more—that students can access and use on an honor system that removes shame and barriers.

These are big accomplishments, but Cleveland doesn’t view them as static ones. The very nature of progress requires plowing forward, even if it’s imperfect, messy, or needs adjustment going from theory to real life.

“Sometimes you just have to do a little bit, and continuing to evolve it will continue to create change and buy-in,” says Cleveland.

Branching Out

Community building is part of Cleveland’s life outside the University, too.

Notably, she’s a power squad leader with Poderistas, a nonpartisan organization founded by a handful of influential women—including actors America Ferrera and Eva Longoria—that helps Latina leaders to build community, develop leadership, and encourage civic engagement. Carmen Perez, one of the founders of Poderistas, calls Cleveland a “visionary leader.”

“She is doing it from a place of truth, knowing what it means to be systemically excluded and to fight your way into power with integrity,” Perez says. “She’s making space for others in every room that she enters.”

In 2022, through Poderistas, Cleveland was invited to the White House to visit with Latina leaders and be honored for her extraordinary leadership work. “It’s really powerful to see that sisterhood,” she says.

“When I think about leadership,” Perez says, “we don’t just need people who can imagine a better world, we need people who can actually build it. She is a builder of brave spaces and bold possibilities because of her persistence.”

While managing her professional role and her work with Poderistas, Cleveland also worked to obtain a Master of Public Affairs with a concentration in Human Rights from the UMN Humphrey School of Public Affairs in 2024. In addition, she is a wife to Bill, and a mother to eight-year-old Carter and five-year-old Idalia. Both children are diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, which she helps them navigate through appointments, assessments, and schooling.

She is also running for the Roseville School Board to expand her influence and use her experiences to champion kids—ones like she was, and ones like her own children.

Fostering Change

As Cleveland continues to broaden her work, she reflects on building both the Maroon Lobby and the Take What You Need Closet as accomplishments that are close to her heart. But what brings her joy and eases the bittersweet moment of moving on to her next role is that capable, passionate people have stepped in to take her big ideas and make them better.

“That’s the ultimate goal,” she says. “Create change that is going to live without you in it. That is my wish for everything I do in life. That’s a legacy. That’s what you hope for.”

That legacy of community is what she aims to build upon with wellbeing, empowerment, and belonging at its center. As she steps into her new role, memories from Mexico, Lakeville, the University, and more, fuel her mission.

“There are a lot of people who have fought for me to be here,” Cleveland says, “and I am not going to have my life mean nothing. While I’m in the world, I want to do my best to leave it better for future generations.”

Top Photo: Geida Cleveland dances with students on College Day, welcoming students for a new school year in Fall 2024. Photo by Pat Vasquez-Cunningham.