Distinguished Alumni Awards

California State University, Chico is proud to recognize the following honorees at the 30th annual Distinguished Alumni Awards(opens in new window) program on March 7, 2025:

• Agriculture: James Barbee
• Behavioral & Social Sciences: Carrie Brown
• Business: Anne Sena
• Communication & Education: Michael Beadle
• Engineering, Comp. Science, & Construction Mgmt: Lachi Richards
• Humanities & Fine Arts: Paul Davis
• Natural Sciences: Kevin Ford
• Alumni Service Award: Amy Louis

Watch highlights from the 2024 Distinguished Alumni Awards(opens in new window).

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James Barbee

College of Agriculture
Agriculture, ’95; Credential, ’97
Current Position: County Manager at Churchill County, Nevada

James Barbee(opens in new window)

James "Jim" Barbee serves as County Manager of Churchill County, Nevada. For almost thirty years, he has dedicated his career to education, agriculture, and community service. Growing up in a family of educators, he developed an early passion for mentorship and leadership, further strengthened by his experiences in Future Farmers of America (FFA).

After completing his bachelor’s degree and teaching credential, he spent four years as a high school agriculture teacher in Fall River Mills, inspiring the next generation of agricultural leaders. Seeking to make a broader impact, Barbee served for over a decade as an agriculture education consultant with the Nevada Department of Education, shaping policies and securing funding for career and technical education programs. His leadership led to his appointment as director of the Nevada Department of Agriculture under Governor Brian Sandoval, where he spearheaded initiatives like the Division of Food and Nutrition and Nevada’s first digital animal identification tracking program.

Throughout his career, his commitment to education, innovation, and public service has remained unwavering—and Barbee continues to be a force for economic development, overseeing projects that support agriculture and community growth.

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Carrie Brown

College of Behavioral and Social Sciences
MA, Anthropology, '09
Current position: Supervisory Forensic Anthropologist at Defense POW/MIA Laboratory

Carrie Brown(opens in new window)is the supervisory forensic anthropologist and laboratory supervisor at the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. The largest skeletal identification laboratory in the world, the DPAA works to identify remains of US fallen warfighters recovered from around the world. Brown, who earned her PhD from the University of Florida, oversees day-to-day operations, supervises staff, and works directly on cases to identify servicemembers and return them to their families.Among her recent projects was one working on the identification of more than 400 service personnel from the USS Oklahoma who died during the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Brown has remained closely connected with Chico State throughout her career, collaborating on research between the University’s Human Identification Laboratory, forensic anthropology faculty, and the DPAA on developing isotope methods to identify fallen service personnel and other research to support its mission. She also provides a stipend each year to enable Chico State master’s students in forensic science students to be able to travel to the American Association of Forensic Science Annual Conference to present research and learn from the top experts in their field. 

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Anne Sena

College of Business
Business Administration, '97
Current Position: Director of Technology at St. David's School in Raleigh, NC

Anne Sena(opens in new window) is the director of technology at St. David’s School in North Carolina, where she leads strategic IT initiatives to enhance the school’s educational environment. Sena has applied her expertise to modernize the school’s IT infrastructure and ensure technology accessibility, particularly during the transition to distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Before transitioning to the nonprofit sector, she spent nearly 18 years at Cisco, where she managed global IT operations and gained extensive experience in enterprise technology.

Sena’s connection with Chico State and the College of Business has remained strong throughout her career. She played a key role in the collaboration between the College of Business and the Computer Science Department to establish the Business Information Systems (BIS) degree. In 2003, she established a scholarship to support BIS students, which she has funded for 20 years and has since grown into an endowed fund. Sena has served on the College of Business Advisory Board since 2014 and was named chairperson of the board in spring 2019.  

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Michael Beadle

College of Communication and Education
Journalism,'96
Current Position: Senior Director of PR at Ubisoft

Michael Beadle(opens in new window)has traveled the globe to help shape the messaging of some of the most iconic titles in the video game industry—The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, Animal Crossing, Just Dance. A senior director of communications at Ubisoft, he has been with the company for 21 years and in the video game industry for more than 25 years. Beadle has also worked for Golin, a global public relations agency, and Nintendo of America. In his role in global product communication, Beadle has assisted with the launch of popular franchises such as Assassin's Creed and  Red Steel.

A Chico native and graduate of Pleasant Valley High School, he is a proud alumnus from a long line of Chico State graduates, including his father, siblings, and uncle. Beadle often returns to Chico State to give lectures and connect with journalism and public relations students. He remains steadfast in his support for the University and has generously supported the college, including its new School of Media, Entertainment, Technology, and Immersive Experiences (METX). 

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Lachi Richards

College of Engineering, Computer Science, and Construction Management
Civil Engineering, '83
Current Position: Owner, engineering consulting business

Lachi Richards(opens in new window), founder and owner of Cascade Engineering, is an accomplished civil engineer with a focus on water resources. Her interest in the field began during junior college and a role with the Department of Water Resources in Redding, where she investigated a water contamination incident that would shape her career path.

After graduating from Chico State, she worked for a Fortune 500 company while training for the 1984 Olympic track trials, missing qualification in the 100 meters by just 0.08 seconds. While preparing for the 1988 Olympics, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis—later found to be a mitochondrial condition—which ended her running career.

Richards taught engineering at Sacramento City College and volunteered to introduce children to engineering before opening her consulting firm in 1997. Richards was inducted into the Chico State Athletic Hall of Fame in 2001. Her 100-meter record of 11.9 seconds in 1983 stood for more than two decades and remains the fourth-fastest in Chico State history. 

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Paul Davis

College of Humanities & Fine Arts
Art History, '02
Current Position: Curator of Collections, The Menil Collection

Paul R. Davis serves as curator of collections at The Menil Collection, a prestigious museum in Houston, Texas. After graduating from Chico State, Davis went on to earn his master’s and doctorate from Indiana University Bloomington, where he immersed himself in the study of art from Africa, the Pacific Islands, and Indigenous Americas. His dissertation dove into the underexplored history of Malian artists who studied abroad during the country’s independence era.

His academic path was shaped not only by coursework but by hands-on experience—working in the university museum, traveling extensively to West Africa, presenting at conferences with peers, and learning from leading international scholars in art history and anthropology. A Fulbright-Hays DDRA grant in 2008–2009 allowed Davis to spend a year in Mali, deepening his understanding of the nation’s artistic traditions and connecting with local artists and their families. His research uncovered narratives that had been overlooked, expanding the global conversation around West Africa, colonial art education, and independence-era cultural politics.

Today, Davis continues to draw from the excitement and sense of wonder that helped him connect with this work. To him, art provides a window into the lived experiences, histories, and identities of people across time and space. And with each discovery, his learning continues, shaping the way the world understands African art.

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Kevin Ford

College of Natural Sciences
Computer Science, Mathematics, '90
Current Position: Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Kevin Ford(opens in new window) has been a mathematics professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 2001. He is one of the world’s foremost experts on prime numbers, with more than 100 published papers in the top mathematics journals, including the Annals of Mathematics, Journal of the American Mathematics Society, and InventionesMathematicae. In 2016, he shared the prestigious $10,000 Paul Erdős Prize(opens in new window) for breakthroughs about gaps between prime numbers, and his work on the distribution of divisors of integers earned him a namesake on the Erdős-Ford-Tenenbaum mathematical constant. 

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Amy Louis

Distinguished Alumni Service Award
Political Science, '86
Current Position: Founder and co-owner of Six Degrees Coffee Service and Distribution

Amy Louis(opens in new window) has been involved in the coffee industry for more than 37 years, starting her journey in San Francisco working for Peet’s Coffee and Tea in the management training program. After leaving Peet’s, Louis was employed at a few different roasters, and eventually worked at Bi-Rite Foodservice Distributors as a coffee specialist. After several years at Bi-Rite, Louis moved on to the wholesale division at Starbucks where she gained experience in the specialty coffee industry just as it was taking off. In 2002 after years of traveling and seeing a need for quality specialty coffee in the North State, she started Six Degrees Coffee and Distribution.

Louis served as president of Soroptimist International of Chico from 2023-2024 and has been recognized for her work to promote the importance of cervical cancer awareness.

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