Some people support a cause. For Bill Cordero, the cause is family. His story and St. Vincent’s story are so closely woven that it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

To understand what St. Vincent’s means to Bill, you have to go back to a little girl on a tennis court.

Who is Bill Cordero?

There is a photograph in the St. Vincent’s archive of a young woman named Venita Gomez, standing on the courts at St. Vincent’s around 1930, racket in hand. Venita was raised by the Daughters of Charity at St. Vincent’s. So were the sisters of a young man named Anthony Cordero. In 1936, Venita and Anthony married, and over time they had eleven children, including a son they named Bill.

That makes Bill, as St. Vincent’s affectionately calls him, a “grandson” of the Daughters of Charity. The women who took in his mother and aunts when they had no one, who nurtured and taught them, shaped the family he was born into. He grew up knowing what St. Vincent’s meant to the people he loved most, and it has been part of his life for as long as he can remember.

A life spent in education

Bill’s was the first generation in his family to graduate from college, and he went on to earn advanced degrees. He began his career as an elementary school teacher in the Goleta school district and served nine years on the Santa Barbara School Board.

The accomplishment he is most proud of began at Santa Barbara City College, where he launched CARE, Cooperative Agencies Resources for Education. The program was designed to help single parents attend college by providing grants and childcare so they could pursue their degrees. What started there is now offered at community colleges across California. Bill retired from SBCC as Associate Vice President of Student Services in 2001, then came out of retirement to serve as Executive Vice President at Hancock College before retiring again in 2011.

There is a beautiful symmetry in this. The Daughters of Charity gave Bill’s mother a chance when she had nothing. Bill spent his career giving that same chance to other parents and children, helping them find their footing through education. The work that shaped his family became the work of his life.

What the family built

The Corderos and their extended family are part of Santa Barbara in the deepest sense, rooted here across generations and known throughout the community. They built businesses. They earned reputations for quality, integrity, and generosity.

Through all of it, Bill never forgot that his own mother’s life was shaped by an organization that chose to care for her. Success did not distance him from that truth. It kept him close to his heritage.

A lifetime of giving back

Bill has given far more than his time to a single event. He has been a steady presence in the St. Vincent’s community for decades, an early supporter of the housing programs on our campus today, and the founder of the Annual Charity Golf Classic, which he chaired for twenty-five years. The event has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years for St. Vincent’s Family Strengthening Program, the region’s long-term transitional housing program for single mothers and their young children.

Bill and his son, Billy Jr., sponsor the tournament’s Putting Challenge, which has become one of the day’s traditions. The numbers matter, but they are not the whole story. What matters is what the money does. It gives mothers and children the same second chance the Daughters once gave Venita, and the same one Bill spent his career working to provide.

The whole family takes part. Several of the Corderos are avid golfers who play in the tournament every year, teeing off together each October in an event that exists in part because of what the Daughters of Charity did for their grandmother nearly a century ago. The little girl on the tennis court could not have imagined it.

Passing the torch

At the 25th Annual Charity Golf Classic in October 2026, Bill marked a milestone of his own. He introduced his granddaughter, Bella Fredericks, who will take up the mantle as the tournament’s next co-chair. The legacy that began with a girl on a tennis court nearly a century ago now passes to her great-granddaughter’s generation. Generation after generation, the family gives back to the place that gave Venita a start.

That is what full circle looks like.

Continuing the tradition

The Charity Golf Classic returns to the Montecito Club each fall, carried forward by a family whose story reflects what St. Vincent’s has always believed: that the care we give one another carries across generations. Learn more about the Charity Golf Classic →

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