alumni

Michael Poryes, co-creator of ‘Hannah Montana’ and ‘That’s So Raven,’ leads workshop in Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts Department 

Michael Poryes has a vision — though he’s not a psychic like the main character from “That’s So Raven,” one of the hit television shows he helped create. Poryes is a guest instructor at San Francisco State University, where he coaches students on their creative, entrepreneurial projects. 

Poryes’ vision actualized looks like feedback in small groups, one-on-one mentorship, humor and positive energy. He cultivates a casual atmosphere inside the small room in Marcus Hall where his workshop is held. While he says the entertainment industry is more competitive than ever, he also wants to impart that success is achievable if you commit yourself. 

“The people that make it are tenacious, and they keep going back and back and back,” said Poryes, feet resting on the table in New Balance sneakers. “Anybody that keeps telling you, ‘Well, it’s so hard, it’s so impossible, blah blah.’ Get them out of your life. Because it is hard, but it is not impossible, and the thing that drives you is your belief in yourself and your passion. If you have that, nothing’s going to stop you.” 

Poryes came to SFSU through an alumni connection. His wife, Diane Poryes, earned her bachelor’s degree in Political Science here in 1988. The Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts Department offers the workshop, which meets four hours a week. Students don’t receive course credit, and they have to find time in their schedules to attend. In other words, they have to want it. Poryes is very impressed with the talent, skills and passion at SFSU. 

Sarah Burke, who completed his workshop last spring, calls it “a college experience I will never forget.” 

“Michael took his time to understand my writing goals and style and understand the level of expertise I was at,” she said. “He encouraged me to continue practicing regardless of how scary the industry may look — and never cool down my creative fiery spirit.”  

Poryes knows a lot about the fire within required to make it. He waited tables in Beverly Hills, keeping a notepad in his apron to jot down jokes. One of his early breakthroughs came in 1982, selling a script for “The Jeffersons” to the executive story editor, SFSU alumnus Peter Casey (B.A., ’75). Poryes is also the co-creator of “Hannah Montana,” the Disney sensation that introduced Miley Cyrus. He continues to develop new shows and meets with networks and streaming services to pitch his ideas. He thrives off of an expectation that 90% of his pitches will be rejected. 

“The other 10% — when you’ve written something and you’re on stage and you hear that laugh exactly where you wanted it — that’s worth it,” he said. “You know, welcome to Hollywood. You’re working for the 10% because the 90% to get there is really hard.” 

Jessica Yeh, an actress and improv performer, applied to the workshop for help writing a film. Under Poryes’ mentorship, the MFA student in Cinema is now working on an original one-woman show.  

“I’m learning, in a lot of ways, to get out of my own way,” she said. “That has helped me to keep going when I’m hesitant about a certain idea, but that I know, deep down, is something I want to communicate and something that I want to put out in the world.” 

Madison Leone (B.A., ’25) is creating an audio app for telling bedtime stories to children. 

“He’s helped bring my ideas to life,” she said. “He’s given more modern twists on them to make them feasible to maybe sell in the future, which I wasn’t even thinking about. I was just thinking about making a fun project, but Michael has given us the lens of how to profit off of it.” 

Christopher Roberts, who worked with Poryes in the spring, describes him as the kind of grounded, generous and visionary leader he aspires to be himself. Poryes has changed the way that Roberts thinks, works and lives.  

“Under his guidance, I learned how to speak with precision, structure stories that resonate and turn raw imagination into focused, tangible results,” Roberts said. “These weren’t lessons that faded after the semester. They’ve become a permanent part of how I work, collaborate and navigate the world.” 

Poryes’ workshop will continue at SFSU next semester. All are invited to apply with a Jan. 30 deadline. For more information, email Professor Miriam at tvsmith@sfsu.edu.

Learn more about the Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts Department. 

Award-winning alumni publication looks back while highlighting the SFSU of past and present 

At the turn of the millennium, San Francisco State University debuted our official alumni magazine. Twenty-five years and 51 issues later, SF State Magazine is an award-winning publication read by tens of thousands of Gator alumni. The Fall/Winter 2025 issue is now available online and in print. 

Issue highlights:

• Room to Grow: SFSU a commuter school? Not for the thousands of students thriving together in modern on-campus housing. 
• Cover Stories: Check out our favorite SF State Magazine covers since our founding in 2000. 
• Poetry in Motion: San Francisco’s poet laureate Genny Lim reunites with Ben Fong-Torres in our exclusive alumni Q&A. 
• Class Notes: updates on your Gator classmates and other alumni. 
• My SFSU Story: Alumnus and SFSU staff member Julian Dancel gives back to students living on campus. 
• And much more. 

SF State Magazine has won numerous awards from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, including the 2021 Robert Sibley Magazine of the Year and a 2025 best of district award. 

Pick up your copy of SF State Magazine at the Cesar Chavez Student Center information desk. Issues are also mailed to alumni worldwide. 

Read the Fall/Winter 2025 issue of SF State Magazine. 

Laxman Narasimhan took part in Lam Family College of Business’ Lam-Larsen Distinguished Lecture Series, in conversation with alumnus Chris Larsen 

At San Francisco State University, the career paths for our students often zig and zag in different directions. While thousands arrive straight from high school and community college every year in traditional fashion, many Gators gain meaningful experiences in unexpected places during and after their educational pursuits. And nearly one-third of our students are the first in their families to go to college.   

This was evident at SFSU’s Lam-Larsen Distinguished Lecture Series on Oct. 28 featuring former Starbucks and Reckitt Chief Executive Officer Laxman Narasimhan in conversation with Ripple co-founder and Executive Chairman Chris Larsen (B.S., ’84). Their wide-ranging talk in the Seven Hills Conference Center explored a variety of topics, including artificial intelligence (AI), labor, education, humanity, disinfectant and, yes, coffee.  

Born and raised in India, Narasimhan moved to America as a first-generation college student at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. His passion was writing poetry, but his parents steered him toward a major in Mechanical Engineering. 

“I’ll tell you one thing: If I had landed in any other country, I would never have made it. I made it because it was America,” he said. 

As AI technology and its burgeoning industry, centered in San Francisco, grows at a fast pace, the fundamental nature of people’s work will change significantly, Narasimhan says. 

“I think we’re going to see very non-linear careers ... with non-traditional people, either acquiring non-traditional skills that they’re going to have to relearn and rebuild over time in a non-traditional way,” said Narasimhan, who also was previously the global chief commercial officer for PepsiCo. 

When Narasimhan was named Starbucks CEO, he took a six-month detour to work at 38 of its cafes. 

“The first day was terrible because my lattes were horrible, and they told me, ‘By the way, this sucks. Go make it again!’” he said. “And I made it again. I dropped food product. I burned my hand. You know, I was, like, ‘Oh, I can't believe this!’ ... Every night I’d sit with them, and I learned their stories.” 

He empathized with the baristas, and he gained their trust. 

“If you can find a way to be human-centered, if you can find a way to connect with people at scale,” Narasimhan said, “you can actually transform and do what you need to do by winning their hearts and their minds, and, therefore, their hands.”   

Students attending the lecture found the talk inspirational. 

“I really enjoy being able to hear from successful people. It makes me feel like being at this school is really worth it,” said Azlyn Henri, a student majoring in Business Administration with an emphasis in Marketing. 

Throughout his talk and answers to questions from the SFSU students, Narasimhan emphasized empathy and inner strength over money.  

“The path to happiness is not to compare. The path to success is to compete with yourself,” he said.  

He added: “The question you ask yourself is not: ‘Am I going to be wealthier tomorrow than I am today?’ The question you can ask yourself is: ‘Am I better tomorrow than I was today?’ ... I would urge you to find this inner strength in you. Because you know what really, actually, at the end of the day, drives success long term is how strong you are on the inside.” 

Learn more about SFSU’s Lam Family College of Business. 

‘Queer Transformations at SF State, 1969 – 1974’ examines a transformative chapter in LGBTQ and campus history 

It was November 1970, amid antiwar protests and just a year and a half after a long and difficult student strike at San Francisco State College. The administration granted recognition to the Gay Liberation Front as an official student organization at a time when LGBTQ clubs did not exist in most colleges and universities. 

“At one time even being gay could get a person thrown off campus,” Gay Liberation Front founder Charles Thorpe told the San Francisco Gay Press. “... This is another victory on our road to more liberation. ... In celebration a thousand lavender bunnies will be freed on campus within the next two weeks.”   

The lavender bunnies never appeared, but future generations of Gators would feel less of a need to hide their identity. 

Thorpe’s bold commentary is just one of dozens of anecdotes of San Francisco State University history in a new online exhibition, “Queer Transformations at SF State, 1969 – 1974,” on the OutHistory website. The exhibition also spotlights contributions from faculty pioneers such as Sally Gearhart and Morgan Pinney, folk musician Betty Kaplowitz (B.A., ’70) and antiwar advocate Gary Weinberg (B.A., ’72). 

History Professor Marc Stein is the director of the website and the curator of the exhibit. More than 40 SFSU students contributed to researching it. SFSU’s Marcus Transformative Research Award and the Jamie and Phyllis Pasker Chair in U.S. History and Constitutional Law helped support the exhibit. 

Stein notes that the student-led 1968 – 1969 Third World Liberation Front strike, which resulted in establishing the first-ever College of Ethnic Studies, inspired the LGBTQ liberation movement on campus and beyond.  

“As it turns out, LGBTQ people participated in the strike and the strike inspired an upsurge in LGBTQ activism,” said Stein, president-elect of the Organization of American Historians. Thorpe, the Gay Liberation Front founder, was active in the strike and inspired by the civil rights movement, for example. 

As a research assistant on “Queer Transformations at SF State,” Zach Greenberg (B.A., ’24; M.A., ’25) spent months reviewing bound volumes of archival SF State student newspapers. He added about 700 of the articles cited in the exhibition, in addition to fact checking, editing and contributing his own photographs.  

“This provided useful training for me, but also it provided an example of the kind of work I’d like to do, which is making history publicly available,” said Greenberg, who won this year’s History Department Graduate Award for Distinguished Achievement. “It was very interesting to see San Francisco State students in the late 1960s and early 1970s around my own age, take up very important activism and coming out as queer people — at significant risk to themselves.” 

View the “Queer Transformations at San Francisco” online exhibition. (Advisory: The exhibition includes nudity, explicit language and hate speech.) 

Bonta addressed thousands of Gator grads and their families at Oracle Park May 23

San Francisco State University celebrated the Class of 2025 at its 124th Commencement ceremony Friday, May 23, at Oracle Park. California Attorney General Rob Bonta provided the keynote address, telling graduates to use their skills and energy to “demand and create a better world, now.”

“Across the nation, our rights, freedoms and safety are under attack,” Bonta told the more than 3,500 graduates in attendance. “Now is not the time for silence or blind compliance. The stakes are too high. Everyone has a role to play in shaping the world we all deserve to live in.”

As part of the ceremony, SFSU commemorated honorary doctoral degree recipients Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Tommy Orange and activist, physician and minister Ramona Tascoe (B.A., ’70). In her remarks, Tascoe echoed Bonta’s encouragement to take action.

“We must be vigilant in making certain that progress is not lost, that growth continues and that all of these wonderful students have opportunities to see the same success in their children and their grandchildren,” said Tascoe. “The world will continue to be a better place because of the rainbow of brilliance that emerges from this campus.”

The University also honored the late author and beloved SFSU Professor of History Dawn Mabalon with a posthumous honorary doctoral degree. California State University Trustee and SFSU alumnus Jose Antonio Vargas (B.A., ’04), a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, was on hand to introduce Mabalon’s sister Darleen Bohulano Mabalon, who accepted the honorary degree. 

“To receive this honor in one of her favorite places, Oracle Park — home to the beloved San Francisco Giants — and from San Francisco State, the university where she poured her heart into her work, is indescribable,” Mabalon said. 

Other Commencement speakers included SFSU President Lynn Mahoney, Associated Students President Brandon Foley, graduate speaker Patra Holmes and undergraduate speaker Belayneh Salilew. Cal State Student Association President Iese Esera, a first-generation college graduate, used his time at the podium to speak to his childhood self — a self who was bullied for being different.

Alumni publication puts spotlight on our student services and alumni who are giving back 

The new issue of SF State Magazine demonstrates how the San Francisco State University community puts students first with generosity of spirit, creating hope for a better tomorrow. The magazine, an official Gator alumni publication, is now available online and in print.   

Issue highlights: 

• Lifting Up, Taking Off: three alumni whose help from SFSU gave them the boost to succeed 
• Wellness 101: Nourishing our students to a healthy life 
• Striking a Chord: an exclusive alumni Q&A with Ben Fong-Torres and globe-traveling musician-educator Mike Blankenship 
• Class Notes: updates on your old SFSU classmates and other alumni 
• And much more 

Pick up your copy of SF State Magazine at the Cesar Chavez Student Center information desk later this week. Issues are also mailed to alumni worldwide. 

Read the spring/summer 2025 issue of SF State Magazine. 

Photos by Juan Montes

Pocket Opera collaboration brings Animation students into new film adaptation of Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’ 

The COVID-19 quarantines of 2020 forced educators and artists alike to work in new and creative ways. One such collaboration involving San Francisco State University’s School of Cinema just recently enjoyed its debut. “A Pocket Magic Flute” is an animated film adaptation of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” produced by the Pocket Opera company of San Francisco. It is a finalist for the Digital Excellence in Opera Award from Opera America. 

Nicolas A. Garcia, artistic director of the San Francisco Pocket Opera, conceived the film project and garnered funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and Opera America. He contacted SFSU Cinema Professor Martha Gorzycki to get students involved. Gorzycki (MFA, ’02), the director of the University’s Animation Program, mentored five student interns who worked on pre-production and production: Estrella Torres, Jacqueline “Rosie” Nares, Alex Wood, Madeline Ko and Jessie Plascencia. 

“It really helped me understand how the pipeline of production works in animation,” said Nares (B.A., ’22), now a library media assistant at an elementary school in Stockton. “I already had a bit of an idea just because I’m a huge animation fan. But being firsthand, I got to try a little bit of everything. Working in background, character and prop design, I was able to figure out where I fit in the pipeline, too, because it is my dream is to work in the industry.” 

Torres (B.A., ’21) helped create storyboards and design characters and props. She says working on “A Pocket Magic Flute” was a pivotal moment for her. 

“It gave me my first real opportunity to step into the animation world and feel confident in my skills,” Torres said. “When Martha reached out to me specifically because of my talents, it was such an honor. It gave me the encouragement I needed to believe in myself and my abilities as an artist. The class she created was small, with only five students, and I felt so fortunate to be one of them. 

“The experience not only helped me grow as an artist, but also reinforced my love for animation as a medium for storytelling,” added Torres, now an instructional aide for middle-school students with disabilities in Brentwood. “I’m truly excited to see how it resonates with audiences and how it might inspire others.” 

Shawneé Gibbs (B.A., ’02) and Shawnelle Gibbs (B.A., ’02) are the lead producers, screenwriters and animation directors on “A Pocket Magic Flute.” The siblings comprise a powerhouse team, writing scripts for cartoons for many of the major studios and networks. Miriam Lewis (MFA, ’12) is the lead costumer. They all attended the world-premiere screening, held in the August Coppola Theatre at SFSU on Sept. 25. 

“A Pocket Magic Flute” has brought together numerous arts organizations, including the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, Oakland Youth Symphony, Sacramento Youth Symphony and Sirnare Animation Studio in Kenya. 

“A Pocket Magic Flute” is now traveling to classrooms of fourth to eighth graders, accompanied by a curriculum and appearances by the artists in person. 

“This was a local and international collaboration of diverse teams of scholars and artists coming together remotely to produce a 20-minute animated film,” Gorzycki said. “One of the primary goals of this project is to educate youth and especially BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and People of Color] youth on collaborative and creative career possibilities in the performing arts, fine arts and media arts.”  

Learn more about the SFSU School of Cinema. 

Fine Arts Gallery presents new artwork reflecting on Ruth Asawa’s Garden of Remembrance on campus 

Eighty-two years ago, Japanese American students from San Francisco State College were forced to withdraw from classes, some taken to prison camps. Twenty-two years ago, San Francisco State University dedicated a garden to honor the Japanese American experience of incarceration during World War II, especially that of the 19 students, and the resilience of this community after their release, designed by acclaimed artist Ruth Asawa. This year, the garden is the subject of further artistic exploration in new works on display in the Fine Arts Gallery on campus. 

“Reflecting on Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance” features new commissioned works by artists Mark Baugh-Sasaki, Tina Kashiwagi, Paul Kitagaki Jr., Lisa Solomon and TT Takemoto.  

The exhibition opens on Saturday, Feb. 24, with a reception from 1 to 3 p.m., and concludes on Saturday, April 6. The Fine Arts Gallery is open Tuesdays – Fridays, noon – 4 p.m. Admission is free. 

Dedicated in 2002, the Garden of Remembrance is located between Burk Hall and the Fine Arts building. A waterfall cascading from behind the Cesar Chavez Student Center signifies the return of the internees to the coastline after the war. Ten large boulders in the grassy area next to Burk Hall represent each of the camps set up during World War II. The names of the 19 former SF State students expelled and the names of the camps are listed on a bronze, scroll-shaped marker. The marker also includes reproductions of official government documents regarding the internment. 

In an essay for the exhibition’s catalog, artist and cultural producer Weston Teruya describes “Reflecting on Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance” as a “relationship of care” to family, community and shared stories. 

“This collection of artworks is an intergenerational remembrance: a deep sensory reflection on ancestral practices and cultural traditions that are studied across veils of time and oceans, and the unearthing of elided histories and traumas from beneath stone memorials or out of the recesses of overlooked archives,” Teruya writes. 

“Reflecting on Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance” is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Charitable Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and SF State’s Instructionally Related Student Activities Fund. 

Learn more about the “Reflecting on Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance” exhibition. 

The Montford Point Marines were 20,000 African Americans trained in the 1940s 

To commemorate Black History Month, a San Francisco State University documentary team will debut four shorts about the first Black servicemembers in the U.S. Marine Corps. Each of the short films will be available on YouTube. 

The films are oral histories with surviving members of the Montford Point Marines, 20,000 African Americans trained between 1942 and 1949 in Jacksonville, North Carolina. The first recruits began one year after U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt outlawed racial discrimination in war industries, allowing Black men and women, although only in a segregated fashion.  

San Francisco State History Professor Trevor Getz, who produced the films along with Cinema Professor Daniel L. Bernardi, emphasizes the lasting legacy of the Montford Point Marines and the lessons that can be learned from them. 

“They fought the Second World War and the war against racism together. And then they went on to serve the country and their communities for decades after,” Getz said. “They want to pass on messages that are of great value to us today. The team of filmmakers led by Bernardi managed to capture those messages authentically. The results are powerful.” 

The Veteran Documentary Corps (VDC), an institute based in SF State’s College of Liberal & Creative Arts, created the films as part of its ongoing mission to tell authentic stories of the American veteran experience. Bernardi, VDC’s director, directed three of them, with Eliciana Nascimiento helming the other. Many other Cinema alumni and students also participated, including Andrés Gallegos, Hannah Anderson, Robert Barbarino, Joshua Cardenas, Jian Giannini and Jesse Sutterley.  

“The series in honor of African American contribution to the ideals of American freedom and civil rights was 95% SFSU: from faculty producers, faculty directors, faculty sound designer, alumni director of photograph, editor and animator to a crew of Cinema graduate and undergraduate students,” said Bernardi, who is a veteran of the Iraq war and a commander in the U.S. Navy Reserves. 

Later this year, Oxford University Press will publish a related nonfiction comic book, “The First Black Marines,” by Getz and SF State History student Robert Willis. 

Watch the documentaries on YouTube. 

Against the odds, two San Francisco institutions have long collaborated on a grassroots level 

“You’re a stranger now in your home town / With strange faces on once familiar streets.”  

These lines from San Francisco State University Professor Emeritus Alejandro Murguía’s poem “Silicon City” evoke the feelings of many residents of San Francisco’s Mission District, where gentrification has torn apart the community for decades. The Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts remains a fixture despite the changes, and it wouldn’t have happened without artists and activists like Murguía. 

“As a marginalized community and community of color, we’re always going to be held to different standards,” said Murguía, the center’s inaugural director who later would earn two degrees from San Francisco State. “And so we always have to come out on top — sobre pasar, go above them — in our talent and our skill and our ability to organize our community so that we can survive.” 

Established in 1977 as inequity and displacement had taken shape in the neighborhood, the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts (MCCLA) provides a full array of free, affordable classes and programming that cover Chicanos, Central and South America and the Caribbean. More than 10,000 people visit every month. Housed in a 37,500-square-foot building honored on the Historic Register of Historic Places, the MCCLA includes an art gallery and studios, a print shop, classrooms and a theatre. It also plays key roles in the annual Carnaval, offering music and dance courses to teach people to perform in the parade. 

“Coming out of the civil rights movement, people of color were finding their voice in this country. Activists were fighting for ethnic studies programs,” said Martina Ayala, MCCLA executive director. “Thanks to those artists and community activists, we can look back at the Mission District and find multiple anchor institutions that were established by young students, many of them at SFSU, who had a long-lasting impact.” 

Coinciding with student activism at SF State in the 1960s, organizers made a major push for the San Francisco government to establish community centers throughout the city. Murguía (B.A., ’90; MFA, ’92), fellow future SF State Latina/Latino Studies Professor Carlos Cordova (B.A., ’74; M.A., ’79) and other students were among those organizing in the Mission.  

“All these cultural celebrations we enjoy today are great, but the history behind them, they came at a cost. And they came at a cost that many college students paid,” Ayala said. “And I can’t thank them enough for their courage to fight for what they believed in.” 

Over the years many SF State faculty have selected the MCCLA as the venue to feature their creative work. Professor Emeritus Carlos Barón (M.A., ’88), once the MCCLA theatre and dance coordinator, premiered his play “Death and the Artist” there. Music Lecturer John Calloway (M.A., ’03) has been performing at the center for decades. 

Murguía says it continues to serve community needs in multiple ways despite existential challenges to the Mission. Gentrification remains the most persistent in the once working-class neighborhood, which was at its peak majority Latina/Latino but continues to decline. 

“It’s a real hotbed of community activism and culture and helps ground the Mission District community through all these phases of gentrification that it’s gone through the past 47 years the cultural center has been around,” he said. “Nationally, it’s a huge magnet for artists from other parts of the country, and even Latin America, to show up in San Francisco and have a place immediately that grounds them in their art, that supports them in their art, that allows them a foundation.” 

MCCLA and SF State faculty and students continue to share a symbiotic relationship, promoting similar grassroots and progressive values. The center frequently employs SF State students as interns, including several this year. SF State Dean of Students Miguel Ángel Hernández has been invited to join the center’s board of directors.  

“Any cultural event that we create — whether it’s a poetry reading, a gallery exhibit, a Carnaval, a music concert — it’s all part of not just our resistance to the antagonism to our community, but an affirmation that we have been here longer than the Pilgrims,” Murguía said. “And that’s super important that we realize that. Every act of culture, whether it’s a mural or a poetry reading, is in fact an act of resistance — doubly so, in our times, when not just our community is being attacked, but arts, reading, literature and books are under assault.” 

MCCLA’s city-owned building needs much maintenance, which will force it to move temporarily beginning July 1. Ayala says she and other MCCLA supporters are using their activism skills to ensure the city government provides written assurance that allows them to return to the city-owned building once retrofit and repairs are completed, honoring the rent of $1 per year.

“I always tell people that the Mission Cultural Center is the hospital of the soul,” Ayala said. “And we all know that during the pandemic, without the arts we would not have been able to survive. When we’re confined in a space, we need to find a spirit.” 

Learn more about SF State’s Latina/Latino Department.