Adelle Monteblanco Recognized With '40 Under 40' Honor
The Portland Business Journal’s annual “40 Under 40” Awards recognize younger leaders in the business world in the Portland metropolitan area. This year’s awards honor top executives, project managers, CEOs and one dynamic public health educator and researcher.
Pacific University Assistant Professor of Public Health Adelle Monteblanco is among the list of the region’s most influential young professionals. The 2023 40 Under 40 class was honored during a luncheon on July 13 at Portland’s Sentinel Hotel.
Monteblanco was recognized for her work on women’s health, including researching and supporting healthcare for pregnant people as well as on disaster preparedness. She was the only person from the field of higher education recognized by the Portland Business Journal.
“The nomination and the award were a total surprise,” Monteblanco said. “It is an honor to be recognized as a force for the future among the ‘40 Under 40’ cohort. Considering that I am the only awardee from the academic world, I thank the Portland Business Journal for recognizing that mentoring and teaching college students has a ripple effect on how the next generation contributes to and transforms the Portland metropolitan area and beyond.
“I extend my gratitude to my nominator Muyoka Mwarabu, a dear friend of 24 years.”
Monteblanco recently finished her first year as a member of the Pacific University faculty, teaching classes in epidemiology, environmental health and public health.
Over the summer, Monteblanco led Pacific University's involvement in a community science-led mapping project to identify urban heat islands in Washington, Multnomah and Clackamas counties. The data will be used to help prepare the region for the threat of extreme heat. The tri-county region was one of 17 communities across the United States that participated in similar data collection projects.
The work is personal to Monteblanco, who was born in Portland and raised in Washington County before leaving the region for her undergraduate and graduate studies. She attended elementary and middle school in the Hillsboro area before graduating high school from St. Mary’s Academy in Portland.
Earlier this year, Monteblanco was recognized by Diverse Issues in Higher Education as one of 15 emerging scholars nationally for her work researching extreme heat and its effects on vulnerable populations, notably pregnant people and youth.
Monteblanco received her bachelor’s degree in environmental science from Regis University in Denver, Colorado, in 2007. She earned her PhD in sociology from the University of Colorado in 2016.
Before joining the Pacific University faculty, Monteblanco was an assistant professor of sociology at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro from 2018 to 2022. She served as a post-doctoral research and teaching fellow at the University of Texas El Paso from 2016 to 2018.
Pacific University is the only comprehensive university in Washington County, Oregon, serving more than 3,600 undergraduate, graduate and professional students in the arts and sciences, business, education, health professions and optometry.