Mario Carmona: Retiring and Reflecting on a Career Well Spent

Mario Carmona is a walking archive of his in-plant’s history. The associate director of Documents and Media (DM) at the University of California, San Francisco, Carmona gets so animated relating events from his in-plant’s past, he maneuvers through multiple anecdotes as he speaks, his enthusiasm contagious.

Mario Carmona

In a conference room near his office in the city’s Mission District, two glass cases are laden with DM memorabilia he’s collected over the years — labels, mugs, rubber stamps, mousepads — tangible reminders of his in-plant’s history.

“I’m this person who just likes keeping stuff,” he admits.

Now, as he readies to retire on June 29 after 31 years at UCSF, Carmona yearns to pass his enthusiasm along to the next generation.

“I always tell my team to not forget that stuff,” he says. He wants them to remember DM’s history, so future customers understand the shop has a foundation at UCSF, and a solid history of service to the school.

Early Graphic Arts Interest

As he reflects on his career, Carmona has no regrets at all about becoming in-plant manager. The urge to design things and see them get printed has always excited him.

“I enjoyed that since high school,” he says.

That high school was Lowell High, in the city’s Lakeshore neighborhood. A lifelong San Francisco resident, Carmona showed an early interest in the graphic arts. As a senior in 1984 he served as art commissioner for his school’s activities board, where he designed posters, fliers, and tickets for dances and rallies. He went to press checks at a local print shop, where he remembers the old-time pressman with his ink-stained hands and a cigarette clenched in his teeth.

With a half-hearted dream of pursuing a career in advertising, but reluctant to leave his beloved City by the Bay, Carmona enrolled in City College of San Francisco, aiming for an associate’s degree in art. He took a part-time job in the campus bookstore at nearby San Francisco State University, and it was there, one day in his sophomore year, that his boss made a life-changing revelation: he showed him an Apple Macintosh.

“He goes ‘Here, check this out. This program’s called Mac Draw. Take a look at it. I want to see if you can just make the ads on this,’” he recalls.

Carmona was floored. This tech miracle left him with a dilemma. In college, he was being taught to use Letraset transfer lettering and Rubylith masking film. Meanwhile, at work, he was being shown the future.

“And so I made the decision in that second year: I never really finished,” he reflects. “I kind of dropped out because I was like, ‘yeah, I need to figure out this computer stuff.’”

Carmona started working full time at SFSU as a marketing assistant, creating ads, brochures, flyers, and signage for the bookstore. After nine years there, an opportunity opened in the UCSF bookstore to manage the sales staff, so he moved over there in 1994 and never looked back.

In 1997, a reshuffling of departments put the bookstore under the director of Reprographics, who quickly saw potential in Carmona and gave him a new role.

“Marketing manager, Reprographics, Mail and Retail Services,” he says, reading it off an old business card he pulls from a box of memorabilia on his desk.

Expansive Operation

At that time the in-plant employed almost 50 people in two locations: an offset shop in South San Francisco and a digital division on the main campus in Parnassus Heights. Mail Services was also under Reprographics. Carmona worked hard to bring in business as part of the sales team. When the Mission Bay campus opened in 2003, he saw the coming need for business cards and other print work, so he developed business relationships there and brought in additional jobs.

Over time, the university changed reporting structures, and mail, the bookstore, and other areas were separated from Reprographics, which by then had changed its name to Documents and Media. His director became concerned about the in-plant’s future, and staff reductions ensued.

On a visit to the University of California-Davis, IPI Editor Bob Neubauer (left), Mario Carmona of UC San Francisco, and Darin Hinman of UC Davis stand with the in-plant's Canon Titan digital press.

To find more business, Carmona reached out to UC Law San Francisco in 2009, which was then cutting ties with its existing managed print services vendor. As a result of that communication, DM began doing campus and student printing for UC Law and also started running its business center.

Seeking other UC partnerships, Carmona talked with the director of UC Berkeley Printing Services, the country’s largest university in-plant, which had both web and sheetfed offset presses. They were working on a deal to send Berkeley’s digital work to UCSF, when something unexpected happened.

“They pulled the rug out from under them in early 2010,” Carmona says. UC-Berkeley made the unwise decision to shutter its in-plant. “And then the Berkeley people we had met in that early time, they started reaching out to us, saying, ‘hey, can you guys help us?’ And we’re like, ‘yeah, absolutely. What do you need?’”

As a result, Reprographics became the de facto in-plant for UC Berkeley, and Carmona started making sales calls there to drum up business. His in-plant took over a copy center in the undergraduate library there as well. This was later joined by a satellite operation on the UCSF Mission Bay campus, giving the in-plant four remote service centers, including one at the main UCSF campus in Parnassus Heights.

Copier Management Program

Another major accomplishment for Carmona at this time was establishing a thriving copier management program spanning several campuses. Reprographics had been managing some copiers and printers at UC Law and UC Berkeley, but in 2011 the program was officially endorsed by the UCSF senior vice chancellor of finance for use by all UCSF campus departments, so Mission Bay’s copiers were brought in. Today, the in-plant manages 1,068 copiers and printers in three locations, and the program generates 36% of its revenue, Carmona says.

“That’s one of the things I’m proud of, being able to help really grow that,” he says.

Another area he helped grow was wide-format printing, which the in-plant started doing in the early 2000s by printing engineering graphics and blueprints. The shop expanded its capabilities over the years, and in 2024 added an HP DesignJet Z6dr printer/cutter and a Graphtec cutter, then got a second Graphtec last year.

Lisa Gee and Mario Carmona stand
outside the main entrance to the UCSF Mission Center in San Francisco, where Documents and Media’s main printing operation is located.

During COVID, when print volumes plummeted, DM made national headlines when it helped create face shields for front-line healthcare workers at the UCSF Medical Center and beyond. Carmona says it was just one more example of how the in-plant is always ready to adjust its services to fit the university’s needs.

In 2020, Carmona became general manager of DM, and in 2022 he was named associate director. In his leadership roles, Carmona has never been comfortable leading from behind a desk. He likes walking the shop floor and helping where he can.

“I walk around, check in on everybody,” he says. “I usually grab a broom and sweep up while the guys are running around.”

His willingness to pitch in and help comes from the hard-working example set by his father, a plant foreman, he says. But also, the fact that he rose through the ranks means he understands from experience how hard his team is working.

“I don’t think I can repay all the work they’ve done that’s given me this career,” he says.

'Like Family'

His gratitude is reflected in the way he and his coworkers think of each other.: “We treat each other like family,” he says.

They frequently bring in lunch for each other and sit together to shoot the breeze while they eat, he says.

Looking back on his accomplishments, Carmona is most proud that he has been able to keep the in-plant going all these years, despite many challenges and threats. “I’m most proud that it’s 2026, and we’re still talking about DM,” he says.

But having endured so many staff reductions over the years, he still worries about DM’s future growth.

“At what point is there a business opportunity and you have to turn it away because you know you can’t keep up?” he laments. “I don’t want to miss an opportunity that’ll help the department because of these staffing decisions that were made.”

Carmona has enjoyed attending conferences like the Association of College and University Printers (ACUP+) over the years to share his knowledge and learn from peers. He will lead a session on fleet management at ACUP+ 2026 in Dallas. The trip will also give him an opportunity to say farewell to his industry colleagues.

Carmona confesses it will be sad to say good-bye to UCSF, where his wife Esther and their two adult children also work. But with Esther planning to retire on the same day as him, he says they will be plenty busy planning retirement travel excursions — which will include a lot of visits to Disney theme parks.

“Our honeymoon was at Disney World,” he says. Having just returned from Tokyo Disney, the couple plans to spend their 35th anniversary in November back in Orlando, riding Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind at EPCOT and reflecting on their successful careers at UCSF.