My Story

Bruce Saito, is a sansei (third generation) Japanese American. Bruce was born in Norwalk, California six years after his parents and grandparents returned to Los Angeles after being incarcerated in Internment Camps in Postin, Arizona.

Bruce began his work with the conservation corps when he was hired by the newly formed CA Conservation Corps in 1977. Bruce was hired as a supervisor/instructor and assigned to the Bret Harte Training Academy in Calaveras County. Over the next 10 years, Bruce served in a variety of supervisor, coordinator, manager and directors at the CCC Santa Clara, San Gabriel, Los Angeles Urban and Camarillo Centers.

In 1986, Bruce helped to establish the non-profit Los Angeles Conservation Corps (LACC) in South Los Angeles. He was initially hired as the Assistant Director and later became the Executive Director in 1995 where he led the LACC until 2015. Durin this 30 year span the LACC developed into one of the largest non-profit corps in the United States, with an annual budget of more than $21,000,000. More importantly, Bruce enrolled and trained more than 20,000 youth and young adults, predominantly from diverse backgrounds and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color Communities.

On September 5, 2015 Bruce was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to be the 10 th Director of the CA Conservation Corps. Bruce grew the CCC from a $90,000,000 annual budget to its current capacity of $170,000,000 in 2023 by developing natural resource programs that addressed critical climate and fire resiliency programs as well as life changing corpsmember youth development priorities for more than 1,600 young adults each year. After more than 46 years in public service and the conservation corps movement, Bruce retired from the CCC on November 5, 2023.

Bruce served as the Board Chair for the Corps Network and still serves on the Corps Network’s Board of Directors. Bruce has helped to create many non-profit programs and currently serves on the Board of Directors at the Friends of Manzanar, Little Tokyo Sr. Nutrition Services, Coalition for Responsible Community Development (CRCD), LA Education Corps Charter High School, Los Angeles County Beaches and Harbors Commission, Community Nature Connection, and the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust.

Bruce earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from San Francisco State University in 1976. Bruce and his wife, Alexandra Torres, live in Long Beach.