Heather Maiirhe Caruso
Associate Dean
UCLA Anderson School of Management
UCLA
Heather Maiirhe Caruso is a faculty member and associate dean at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, as well as faculty co-director of the Inclusive Ethics Initiative. She spent her early career as an engineer and executive in a multinational Silicon Valley startup, and has since become a Stanford- and Harvard-trained academic focused on the contributions of inclusive excellence to individual, organizational, and societal well-being. A Southern California native, Heather came to UCLA Anderson after over a decade co-directing (with 2017 Nobel Laureate in Economics Richard Thaler) a renowned judgment and decision making center at Chicago Booth, and now supplements her academic activities with consulting for private- and public-sector organizations on the practice of inclusive excellence in leadership, communication, and collaboration.
Caruso’s conference session aims directly at supporting our theme: One UC, Many Voices: Building Resilience Together! Attendees will learn about how inclusive excellence at work is a process of joint innovation—it is continual exploration of the infinitely diverse ways we may contribute to our shared mission, channeled through efficient collaboration to advance positive change. Come learn how each of us can support full participation in the work of our institution!
Caín Díaz
Associate Vice President, Budget
UCOP
Caín Díaz joined UCOP in 2016 and has over 19 years of higher education experience with the University of California. As Associate Vice President for Budget Analysis & Planning (BAP), Caín oversees the development and implementation of the University of California’s $55 billion budget for current operations and coordinates long-range financial planning for the UC system. His team manages budget proposals and reports provided to state agencies on behalf of the UC system.
Caín is closely engaged in high-level decision-making related to the allocation of over $4.9 billion of ongoing state resources to the ten campuses. In addition, Caín oversees the management of policies and approvals related to student tuition and fees.
Prior to joining UCOP, Caín worked at the Berkeley campus for ten years, with most of that time spent managing a team of Finance Analysts, each providing financial and administrative support to a portfolio of Organized Research Units under the Vice Chancellor for Research.
Caín is originally from Inglewood, CA, the proud son of Mexican immigrants, and a first-generation college graduate. Caín holds an undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley in Political Science and a Master of Public Administration (Public Management) from CSU Dominguez Hills.
Dianna E. Henderson
Vice President of Systemwide Human Resources
Dianna Henderson is the Vice President, Systemwide Human Resources and Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) for the University of California’s 10-campus system, including multiple academic medical centers. In this role, she is responsible for Systemwide Human Resources and programs. This includes Strategic Planning, Employee/Labor Relations, Talent Management, Health & Welfare benefit policies and programs, Senior Management Recruitment, Compensation, Performance Management and ensuring compliance with the University’s Staff Human Resources policies. She has oversight for the University of California Retirement Plan (UCRP). In addition, she oversees multiple programs that impact work and life for 265,000 people in diverse roles across the UC system.
A seasoned HR executive with deep expertise, a reputation for stakeholder engagement, collaboration and steady leadership, and more than 15 years of UC experience, Ms. Henderson is well known throughout the UC HR community as a thoughtful leader and a collaborative partner committed to supporting the UC mission and our valued employees. In 2025, she led the effort to streamline processes and expand UC’s Catastrophic Leave Donation Program to allow employees across the system to donate leave to colleagues affected by the Eaton or Palisades Fires.
Prior to her current role, Ms. Henderson served as the Deputy Chief HR Officer and Chief of Staff to the Vice President of HR and as Interim Chief HR Officer for UC Office of the President. Earlier in her UC HR career, she worked on the systemwide labor negotiation team, working on the first collective bargaining agreement with the UAW unit representing postdoctoral scholars. She later led systemwide HR policy development and managed the Finance and Administrative team embedded in systemwide HR, and she previously served as the Acting VP of HR when the Vice President was unavailable, providing consistent executive leadership. Before joining the University of California, she worked for over 12 years in HR at a UC-affiliated clinical research center, supporting principal investigators and postdoctoral scholars in Emeryville, California.
Ms. Henderson holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Xavier University and her MBA from Holy Names University. She is a proud longtime resident of Oakland, California.
Cassie Holmes
Cassie Holmes is the Bud Knapp chaired professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, an award-winning teacher and researcher on time and happiness, and the bestselling author of Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most.
Happier Hour was selected as an Amazon Best Book of the Year, and Holmes’s academic research has been widely published in lead academic journals. The course that she developed and now teaches, Applying the Science of Happiness to Life Design, is among UCLA’s most popular for MBAs and Executive MBAs alike.
Prior to joining UCLA, Cassie was a tenured faculty member at Wharton, and she has a Ph.D. from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and a B.A. from Columbia.
David S. Meyer
David S. Meyer is professor of sociology and political science at the University of California, Irvine. He’s written extensively on social movements and social change, and is author or editor of many books, most recently How Social Movements (Sometimes) Matter. The 2017 recipient of the John D. McCarthy Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Scholarship of Social Movements and Collective Behavior, and the 2025 Robin M. Williams Lifetime Award from the American Sociological Association’s section on peace, war, and social conflict. In 2025, he was awarded the Andrew J. Carnegie fellowship to study polarization. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from Boston University, and an undergraduate degree in literature from Hampshire College. He is the lead editor of the Cambridge University Press book series on Contentious Politics, and founding co-editor of the Cambridge University Press Elements series on Contentious Politics. He will discuss the current attack on higher education and available strategies for preserving what’s best about the university.