Myrna Ortiz, Academic and Staff Personnel Manager, retired on April 25, 2025 after twenty-one years of service to UCLA, fifteen of them at the Center and Clark. Myrna started her career at UCLA in 2004 at Olive View Medical Center as a Case Manager/Community Representative, and then moved to the Center for Network-Embedded Sensing as a Purchasing Coordinator. She became part of the Division of Humanities in 2007, when she was promoted to Program Coordinator for the Departments of French and Francophone Studies, Italian, German, and Scandinavian, now combined as the Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies. In 2010, she took another promotion to Administrative Analyst in the Center for 17th-and-18th-Century Studies, and she has been with us ever since.
Myrna has had a hand in most of the Center’s work over the past fifteen years, even though she remained mostly behind the scenes. She has been instrumental in bringing fellows from around the world to do research with the Clark’s collections, ensuring that they had the proper appointments and visas and that their fellowships were paid out on time. She has done every sort of administrative work, from processing travel reimbursements to logging keys, and has supported every type of program that the Center has held, from chamber music to conferences. Myrna was also a meticulous personnel officer known for her diligence, attention to detail, and spreadsheets. She kept track of all the hiring and human resources for the Center and Clark, providing crucial services to the Clark community. But more than that, she cared about everyone she interacted with, leading with an ethos of empathy. She remembered all of the staff birthdays, and was a sympathetic ear for anyone who needed someone to listen. Her calm steadfastness will be much missed.
She plans to hike, practice yoga, travel, spend time with family, engage in creative activities, and take up gardening in retirement, and all at the Center and Clark wish her well.
-Laura Clennon, Assistant Director