2015 True Triton Award Recipients

Manuelita Brown is the Director of UC San Diego’s Honor Achievement Workshops and member of UC San Diego Alumni’s Black Alumni Council and the UC San Diego Alumni Board of Directors. Since 2003, she has chaired the Black Alumni Scholarship Fund Committee and served as liaison between the UC San Diego Foundation, its scholarship office and the San Diego Foundation. Manuelita is an artist who aims to create bronze sculptures that represent and capture the human spirit. Some of her familiar work includes the Sojourner Truth and UC San Diego Triton figures that reside on campus. View Video

Chris Yanov is the founder of Reality Changers, a San Diego-based program providing youth from disadvantaged backgrounds with the academic support, financial assistance and leadership training to become first-generation college students. Since Chris founded Reality Changers in 2001, the program has helped award nearly five million dollars in scholarships to inner-city students. Yanov was selected as an inaugural leader of the San Diego Commission on Gang Prevention and Intervention and also served as the chair of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce’s Education and Workforce Development Committee. View Video