Leticia de la Vara, Chief Impact and Operating Officer at New Politics, spent their school years in the part of the education data nobody writes reports about: the middle. That middle is huge, and Leticia argues it is where the gains are.
In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Leticia to talk about the move from community organizing to the C-suite, and why servant leaders belong on the ballot.
Leticia grew up in Phoenix, raised by a single mother who organized in the Chicano movement while raising four kids. School was somewhere Leticia went during the day, not a place they felt seen. The education happened in the community, knocking doors for Ed Pastor's first congressional campaign and watching Latino organizers run rooms no classroom showed them.
Years later, as a single parent, Leticia applied for a job answering phones at a new ASU center founded by the former head of the National Council of La Raza. The center had three people, so Leticia was in every conversation about what to build. They became the staff member who launched the American Dream Academy, which graduated 250 parents in its first offering and still runs at ASU twenty years later. Leticia finished their degree at 33, with their daughter in the crowd.
Mike and Leticia get into what demographic data missed about kids like them, and why "at risk" never matched the home they had. They also take on the assumption that politics happens far away in DC, when it mostly lands at the school board and county level.
Tune in to hear why Leticia measures leadership by what keeps working after you leave.
Chapters:
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01:58 Meet Leticia de la Vara: a Phoenix kid with border town roots
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07:03 Nobody writes reports about the kids in the middle
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11:56 The Chicano movement taught what the classroom never did
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18:14 What single parents apologize for, and what their kids remember
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24:29 From answering phones to launching the American Dream Academy
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31:06 What at risk data misses about a home full of love
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34:31 Servant leaders from classrooms and clinics belong on the ballot
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41:01 Most politics is not in DC, it is your school board
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49:03 Show people where the door handle is, then make the door wider
Links:
Connect with Leticia on LinkedIn, or visit New Politics to see how they work with servant leaders, including educators, who are thinking about running for office.
Stay strong.
Episode 46