Melanie Ziment serves as the Program Associate for the Center and is responsible for supporting programming and outreach efforts and overseeing the Center's VOICE Initiative. Ziment first became involved with the Center as a part of the inaugural class of VOICE Grant Recipients in 2020. As part of VOICE, she co-founded the opinion podcast Hot Off The Pod, which sought to create a space where students, faculty and local leaders could engage in open dialogue about issues impacting college students at UCSB. She is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara earning Bachelor of Arts degrees in Communication and English. During her time at UCSB, she served as the Opinion Editor and later the Managing Editor of the Daily Nexus, UCSB’s student-run weekly newspaper.