Fleetster Friday: Meet Raiza Ruiz-Kline

It's Fleetster Friday! Today, we want to put the spotlight on our Volunteer & HR Coordinator and University Heights resident, Raiza Ruiz-Kline. Raiza oversees our volunteer programs here at the Fleet. Her work, which she describes to be just like “cat-herding science nerds,” involves everything from training the Fleet’s incoming volunteers to meeting with the San Diego STEM community to showing off hands-on science to students. Some of her favorite places to be in San Diego are Balboa Park’s very own Daniel’s Coffee Cart and the Pavilion of Flight in the Air & Space Museum. However, she’s at her happiest when she’s relaxing on her hammock under the Scripps Pier—a San Diegan to a T! 

Complete this sentence: I love science because …

I’ve always had a lot of questions about the world around me (seriously, ask my parents) and science is just one of the tools I’m lucky enough to have to start answering them. 

What was the worst style choice you ever made?

I went through a deeply tragic phase around 2008 where I thought the peak of fashion was to layer a long-sleeve crewneck T-shirt under a short-sleeve v-neck T-shirt. Unfortunately for me, this period happened to overlap with both yearbook photos that year. I also took part in the cosmetic hegemony of raccoon eyeliner and side bangs that were really just a helmet of hair.

You have your own late night talk show, who do you invite as your first guest?

The Obama dogs, Bo and Sunny. If they want to bring their humans, they are more than welcome to!

You have to sing karaoke, what song do you pick?

Love Story by Taylor Swift alone, Mr. Brightside by the Killers with friends and Can’t Hold Us by Macklemore and Ray Lewis with Fleet Public Programs Manager Andia Pebdani, only.

What is your favorite TV show?
The Good Place, hands-down. I’m a big fan of all tongue-in-cheek criticisms of the human experience and this show does it in the most delightfully humorous and didactic way.

What was the country you last visited outside of the United States?

I studied abroad in Sweden my third year of college and I am a Professional Sweden Fangirl to this day, but since I technically lived there, the last country I visited was Hungary.