Rich Archbold: 2 Long Beach community leaders attending prestigious MPA program at Harvard – Press Telegram

It’s back-to-school time for two of Long Beach’s community leaders.

Uduak Ntuk, president of Long Beach City College’s board of trustees, and Long Beach equity officer Alanah T. Grant have been admitted to the prestigious Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Mid-Career Masters of Public Administration program.

They will join 360 other leaders from around the world who want to learn how to create public policies to solve some of the planet’s most-pressing issues, in addition to improving problems at home.

Grant is already in Cambridge, Massachusetts, attending classes, which started in the summer. Ntuk said he is attending Zoom classes until his LBCC board presidency ends in December. After that, he will attend classes in Cambridge.

Why are Ntuk and Grant pursuing this graduate school program now?

Ntuk, who has a successful engineering career, in addition to his public position at LBCC, said he wanted to “strengthen my ability to develop effective public policies that improve outcomes for our residents. After graduation, I hope to combine my energy expertise, higher education background, public sector management experience and new policy tools to create a broader positive impact across Southern California.

“Just as importantly,” he added, “I hope to inspire current and future students that you can start at Long Beach City College and truly go anywhere, including Harvard University.”

Grant, meanwhile, said she was motivated by the challenges of leading equity work in Long Beach in 2025. As equity officer, she directs initiatives to integrate racial, language, disability and immigrant justice into city operations.

“What stands out most from that period was uncertainty,” Grant said.

She pointed to the loss or potential loss of funding for public health and services, and changes to longstanding federal policies and priorities.

“For me, that moment reinforced how quickly the environment in which public servants operate can change,” Grant said. “It made me want to better understand how leaders preserve effective public institutions through political and legal change and continue producing meaningful outcomes for communities even when the conditions around the work shift.”

Grant said she chose Cambridge’s Ivy League university because Long Beach has previously partnered with Harvard Kennedy School-affiliated programs, including the Government Performance Lab and the Bloomberg Center for Cities, as the scope of work for the city’s Community Crisis Response Team was developed.

After nine years with Long Beach, Grant said, she wanted “the space to step outside of the day-to-day demands of the work, examine what I’ve learned through practice and build the skills necessary for the next level of public leadership.”

Grant said she was especially interested in how economic opportunities can be expanded in historically disinvested communities and how public institutions can help shape places where people have the opportunity to thrive.

In the next five-to-10 years, Grant said, she sees herself working to explore what institutional conditions “allow policies and practices that improve quality of life to take root and remain resilient through political shifts, legal challenges, leadership transitions and changes in public opinion.”

“Ultimately,” she said, “I hope the next phase of my career allows me to remain grounded in the practical work of improving people’s lives.”

Ntuk represents North Long Beach as one of six members on the Long Beach Community College Board of Trustees. He was first elected in 2018 and has served four terms as board president.

He played football at both St. Anthony High School and LBCC, and continued his education with engineering degrees at Cal State Long Beach and USC. where he received a master’s degree in petroleum engineering.

He has been a faculty member of the chemical engineering department at CSULB. He’s also a graduate of the Leadership Long Beach one-year training program.

Grant is a Long Beach native who played basketball at Wilson High School. She graduated from South Carolina State University with a degree in political science. Her experiences in the nonprofit and public sectors include living in Northern India for nine months, where she worked in various villages on rural sustainable development projects.

Good luck to Ntuk and Grant as they go to one of the world’s top-notch schools to sharpen their already formidable leadership skills — so they can do even more to help people and solve problems.