2011
Alum Award Recipients
Diane Chin '85
Distinguished Achievement Award
Diane Chin was recognized for her lifelong commitment to social justice as a civil rights attorney. In the wake of 9/11, Chin reached out to Muslim and South Asian communities, developing trainings for Bay Area lawyers to assist victims of hate crimes and discrimination. Chin has served with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area; the Oakland branch of Protection & Advocacy, a statewide disability rights agency; and as a senior trial lawyer for the Office of Citizen Complaints, an independent agency that investigates grievances against the San Francisco Police Department. She is currently a lecturer and associate dean for public service and public interest law at Stanford Law School. Chin has also served the Mills community: in 1991, she was a founding co-chair of the AAMC’s Alumnae of Color Committee. In her concluding remarks, Chin charged her Mills sisters to be strong women, proud women, Mills women—and to “let us always dare to be powerful women.”
Susan Brown Penrod '71
Outstanding Volunteer Award
Susan Brown Penrod first became active in the AAMC working a telethon. Because she enjoyed the people with whom she worked, Penrod was inspired to do more. This fond “fanatic for the AAMC” has spent 40 years serving and later leading the College through a multitude of transitions in her past roles as a member of the AAMC Board of Governors, chair and volunteer for the Alumnae Fund, class agent, co-chair of the Cyrus and Susan Mills Society, president of the AAMC, and Alumna Trustee on the College’s Board of Trustees, where she served as a founding member and chair of the Ad-Hoc Committee on Alumnae Relations. “Volunteering for Mills is obviously an important part of my life,” said Penrod. She recalled that she was prepared for this work as a student at Mills, where “the supportive community and small classes helped me learn to form my own opinions and speak my mind.”
Irina Dang '08
Recent Graduate Award
A registered nurse, Irina Dang is a graduate of the Mills College/Samuel Merritt University Nursing Program and a current member of the AAMC Educational Outreach Committee and the AAMC Nominating Committee. Last spring, Dang assisted in coordinating the first annual Nurse Day at Mills, when 30 Mills nursing students and alumnae met with local nurses representing all areas of healthcare to share personal experiences and professional challenges. Dang said she struggled through the nursing program and so felt compelled to support students by helping to “initiate a buddy process for nursing students to engage with professional nurses who share like interests.” She hoped her leadership in alumnae affairs would inspire other recent graduates to become involved in College and AAMC activities.