Assembly member Shirley Nash Weber was elected in November of 2012 to represent California’s 79th Assembly District, which includes the cities of Bonita, Chula Vista, LaMesa, Lemon Grove, National City and San Diego.
Dr. Weber chairs the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Public Safety and the California Legislative Black Caucus. She also serves as a member of the Assembly Standing Committees on Education, Higher Education, Elections, Budget, and Banking and Finance. Moreover, Assembly member Weber currently Chairs the Select Committee on Campus Climate, which was created to examine and mitigate hate crimes on California’s college and university campuses. The committee also explored student hunger, sexual assaults, homelessness, and freedom of expression. She formerly chaired the Select Committee on Higher Education in San Diego County, which explored the need for an additional higher education facility in San Diego and ways to improve the quality, affordability and equal access of higher education in the region.
In addition to these educational endeavors, in 2013, Assembly member Weber was appointed by then-Speaker John Pérez to serve as the California State Assembly’s representative on the National Education Commission of the States (ECS). The ECS is a nation-wide, non-partisan, interstate group approved by Congress in 1965 to help states develop effective policy and practices for public education by providing data, research, analysis, and leadership.
In August 2019, Assembly member Weber introduced and passed a historical piece of legislation AB 392 known as the California Act to Save Lives.
Prior to being elected to the Assembly, Dr. Weber served as the mayor’s appointee and Chair on the Citizens’ Equal Opportunity Commission. She has also served on the Board of the NAACP, YWCA, YMCA Scholarship Committee, Battered Women Services, United Way, San Diego Consortium and Private Industry Council, and many more. From 2004-2006, Dr. Weber was President of the National Council for Black Studies, the premier professional organization of scholars in the discipline of Black, Africana and/or African American Studies.
Assembly Member Weber has lived in the 79th Assembly District for over 30 years. She was a faculty member and chair of the Department of Africana Studies at San Diego State University for over four decades. Deeply committed to education, she served for eight years as school board member and president at San Diego City Schools. As an Assembly member, she has translated her commitment to education and social justice into her ambitious legislative agenda, including bills on K-12 education reform, civil rights, public safety, food insecurity, protections for person with disabilities, and voting rights.
From 2005-2006, Dr. Weber hosted a popular weekly radio program entitled, “It’s a New Day with Dr. Shirley Weber,” on KURS AM 1040. The program was broadcast live throughout San Diego and internationally over the internet. In 2006, she aired her program live from Johannesburg, South Africa, sharing her students’ perspectives and those of local South Africans. Dr. Weber has received hundreds of awards, including several Legislator of the Year awards. She has lectured extensively across the U.S., Caribbean and Africa.
Assembly Member Weber is the mother of two children. She has two Grandsons and a Granddaughter, and is the widow of the late Honorable Daniel Weber, a California state judge.
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