Who am I and why it matters

Hi! I'm Dorie, and I moved to Ceres to start a family in a great community. Fresno born and raised, I am a Valley girl at heart. I care deeply about our area- its growth, history, and people- and am committed to helping where I can.

I was appointed to the City of Ceres Planning Commission in 2025 and remain concerned about the direction of development. We need more housing in California, and we need to do that carefully here where precious land grows the country's food. Thoughtful growth and an attention to the needs of Ceres citizens themselves should be balanced with an enthusiasm for community development. Ceres is named after the Roman goddess of agriculture and abundance, after all!

So who am I? Teaching is my calling, and motherhood is my honor. After earning my PhD in history, I taught high school and middle school in Modesto. I also taught courses in American history and cultural anthropology to undergraduates for a decade at UC Merced. I'm proud to say my family and I have fostered over a dozen foster children in our care and have several enrolled in Ceres public schools specifically because Ceres as a whole has so much to offer. 

Civil service is in my blood and training. My parents met working for the State of California in the 1970s, and raised me in Fresno public schools, libraries, and parks. I got my Bachelor's of Arts in Political Science and Ethnic Studies from Berkeley, and focused on urban history during my doctoral studies at UC Merced. I was a Public Policy Summer Fellow at Carnegie Mellon and a Rotary International exchange student in Gothenburg, Sweden. Additionally, I wrote regular monthly columns in the Fresno and Modesto Bee newspapers as a high school and college student.