The Long Beach City College (LBCC) Board of Trustees voted to hire Dr. Nina Richardson as the Interim Director of International Students during its Feb. 22 board meeting.
Dr. Richardson is the spouse of Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson.
Richardson earned her master’s degree from USC in 2011 and her Doctorate of Educational Leadership in 2021 from the USC Rossier School of Education.
According to Dr. Richardson’s LinkedIn she has been employed by USC Marshall School of Business as an Associate Director of the Business Analytics Program for the past 5 years. Prior to that position she has been employed by USC in other positions for just over seven years.
Long Beach City College Board President Uduak-Joe Ntuk was a huge campaign donor to Richardson’s husband’s mayoral campaign for mayor of Long Beach.
“Uduak-Joe Ntuk donated another $9800 to Richardson’s campaign this filing period not including the thousands he gave to labor unions that are also supporting Rex,” said a political analyst who wished to remain anonymous. “Uduak is moving money thru the unions to fund Rex’s campaign.”
“It’s like Uduak is a shell company for Rex’s campaign,” said the analyst. “School board and college board members don’t have contribution limits and Rex does so you have donors donate to Uduak and Uduak sends that money to a PAC and/or the Unions to spend on Rex’s campaign.”
In 2020, Richardson supported the campaign of Ntuk’s wife, Tunua Thrash, in a hotly contested race for a city council seat occupied by Al Austin.
Thrash has served on the board of the City of LA Measure HHH Citizens Oversight Commission.
LBCC officials had been exploring the possibility of establishing a director position to manage the college’s international student enrollment strategy since 2019.
Those efforts, though, were derailed by the coronavirus pandemic until last year, according to Carl Kemp, LBCC’s interim executive public affairs director.“Dr. Richardson has implemented innovated strategies for increasing international student populations at higher education institutions,” Kemp said, ” “and we look forward to her contributions to LBCC’s efforts in developing this important program.”
In 2016, Kemp was prosecuted by U.S. Attorney Eileen M. Decker for “failure to fully report income on federal tax returns” after failing to report more than $750,000 in income over a six-year period. At the time, Kemp was a lobbyist whose clients included illegal marijuana stores.
Decker was recently named the Director of the Office of Constitutional Policing for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
It is unknown if Nina’s job is a political favor for her husband. According to news reports, it is unclear how many people were considered for the job as the college kept that information private.
Richardson will serve a one-year term, with a $115,000 salary.
To see the long list of campaign contributions from Ntuk to Richardson’s campaign click here.
Emile St. John is a freelance journalist for 2UrbanGirls.com and a contributing writer for the Los Angeles Wave newspaper.
