As the Associate Director of Student Activities and Leadership Programs (SALP), Angela L. Hamilton coordinates the department’s leadership development programs and oversees the SALP Marketing and Student Organization Advising teams including our Student Operated Services. Currently finishing up her dissertation, Angela has researched the role of trauma-informed college food pantries for cultivating student success.
Originally coming to Portland State for a Master’s degree in 2008, she became an active student leader in a SALP student organization then a student employee in what is now the Student Sustainability Center. After graduating in 2011, Angela worked for two years in the Portland State Institute for Sustainable Solutions while teaching sustainability and leadership courses in University Studies and the Educational Leadership and Policy departments. From 2013 to 2022, she served as the Coordinator of Student Operated Services championing student employment as a student success strategy and key to future alumni engagement.
Angela has been educating diverse learners for nearly 30 years and has co-founded two Portland-based nonprofits focused on sustainability education. Prior to attending graduate school, Angela lived in Ecuador for four years teaching English and working in ecotourism, and she is a certified Spanish-English interpreter. She grew up in a tiny rice farming community in Northern California and is a first-generation college student. Having had the support of many mentors along her path, she most loves the years-long relationships she develops with students and supporting their career and life goals.
In her free time, Angela tries to balance worrying about the climate future with enjoying time gardening, Netflixing (yes, it’s a verb!), being a foodie, making travel plans, and exploring the waterways of the Pacific Northwest with her partner and their two dogs (and sometimes her adventurous cat).