Interim leaders selected for Employee and Labor Relations

To: UC Santa Cruz Community

From: Steve Stein, Associate Vice Chancellor, Staff Human Resources

Dear Colleagues, 

Jennifer Schiffner will be leaving UC Santa Cruz effective April 11, 2022. She has accepted an exciting new position as the director of Employee Relations for North America with VISA International, based out of Foster City. This move allows Jen to focus on some of her HR passions, like building out performance management and conflict resolution strategies for a broad and diverse employee population.

This is bittersweet news for all of us. We will miss her dearly but are very happy to know she will be starting a new career adventure. 

Since joining our campus in 2014, Jen has made so many outstanding contributions to SHR and our campus mission. She has built a strong ELR team; she has been an exceptional contributor on our SHR leadership team; she has advised the chancellor, CP/EVC and other leaders on a myriad of complicated employee and labor related issues. Most of all she has been a role model of our values and principles of community as she has gone about her work.

Effective April 12, Barbara Greening and Sabrina Shaver will share the leadership roles for labor relations and employee relations, respectively. They will both report to me and serve on the SHR leadership team. The three of us are collaborating on this transition and we will continue our efforts to ensure we are working as effectively as possible.

Thanks and appreciation to Barbara and Sabrina for their team spirit and commitment to work side-by-side until at least the end of June or until otherwise notified.  

Sabrina will be responsible for all employee relations matters such as COVID compliance, performance management and policy compliance. In addition, Sabrina will attend committee and other meetings that traditionally have employee relations presence both locally as well as represent our campus on system-wide projects.

Barbara will be responsible for all labor relations matters such as bargaining, grievances, requests for information, Article 5 and other labor relations compliance issues, and terminations. In addition, Barbara will attend committee and other meetings that traditionally have labor relations presence, including systemwide labor projects.

The ELR team will continue to function as one unit, in which Sabrina and Barbara will share the leadership roles of running meetings and overall supervision within their respective sub-units.

Please join me in thanking Jennifer for her service to UC Santa Cruz and Sabrina and Barbara for helping lead the team during this transition.