Faculty

Dr. Joseph T. Koroma has been teaching geography since 2005 at higher education institutions in the states of Indiana, Washington and California.

Geography is an integrating discipline and I hope to utilize my education and experience to encourage, engage and empower our students to acquire the requisite knowledge and skills to meet their academic and/or career goals.

I am also passionate about promoting global education and international development.

Outside of teaching and work, I love reading, walking, traveling and spending time with family.

Hello, I am a first-generation college graduate from a working-class family who started my educational journey in community college! After attending City College of San Francisco, I transferred to UC Berkeley where I studied Political Economy and International Development. While at Berkeley, I happened to enroll in a Geography course, and it unlocked a passion that I pursued in graduate school.

Studying geography gave me language for understanding something I had felt my whole life — that there is a geography to inequality. As the daughter of an immigrant from Brazil, my lived experience taught me about the power of community and that belonging to multiple worlds is an asset. But in school, media, and politics, I received other messaging; that Brazil was “backwards”, “less than”, and “dangerous”. This is why I am so passionate about Geography! Geography is an opportunity to rewrite those narratives and uncover stories that exist but remain untold.

I am committed to supporting students along their educational journey and encouraging them to think deeply about the world around us. Remember, we impact the world just as much as it impacts us! I have worked in education for 10+ years, teaching English in Brazil, working in college-access in East Los Angeles, and teaching geography at UCLA as well as multiple Bay Area community colleges before joining De Anza College. I received my MA and PhD in Geography from UCLA, conducting research on the ways immigrants navigate gentrification and preserve cultural institutions through community care. I am an active member of the Latinx Geographies Specialty Group at the American Association of Geographers and in my spare time, I enjoy powerlifting, cooking, and going to the movies!

Instructor Peña has worked in the geography industry in several capacities. She started her career at Navigation Technologies, a navigation system company (digitizing road networks for smartphone maps and other Geographic Information Science applications), in hi-tech as a Program Manager at Sun Microsystems, and at the U.S. Geological Survey (as a geographer/cartographer). She has been teaching college geography since 2006 and currently teaches online at SJSU, De Anza College, and Lake Tahoe Community College.

Instructor Peña is very passionate about international travel and seeing new places. She has been to over 30 different countries and hope to get to many more in the future! She strives to instill this passion for geography and travel in all her students.