Tricia Noyola is a charter school leader, Regional Superintendent at the KIPP Foundation, and former CEO of Rocky Mountain Prep who builds schools as love letters to the communities they serve.
In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Tricia to talk about bold leadership, identity, and what it really means to build schools that serve their communities.
Tricia traces her path from the Rio Grande Valley to a college experience that exposed the inequity gap she had never fully seen, to becoming a first-time principal of the lowest performing school in her network with no formal training and no intention of ever being a leader. She shares what mentor Joanne Gama saw in her when she could not see it herself, and how she and her team turned that school into the highest performing elementary in the community.
The conversation sharpens around two ideas Tricia keeps returning to: boldness means asking what if it does work out and acting on that answer, and the idea that 'high expectations and love for kids are opposites' is one of the most damaging false binaries in education today.
Tune in to hear why accountability and care are not a choice, and what happens when leaders stop pretending they are.
Chapters:
01:09 π΅ Growing up on the Texas-Mexico border where culture was bright and identity was fluid
05:06 π‘ Native Texan roots: life before the border that felt like a border
08:39 π¬ The Selena moment and what border identity actually looks like from the inside
16:05 π Getting to college and seeing the inequity gap for the first time
19:53 π« Joanne Gama's bet: principal of the lowest performing school in the network
21:30 π Year one was a disaster and why that became the most important lesson
29:24 π₯ The boldness principle: what if it does work out?
37:29 π My school is a love letter to the community
39:02 βοΈ Accountability is not a dirty word: rejecting the false binary in education
Links:
Connect with Tricia on LinkedIn and follow her work at the KIPP Foundation to see what bold, community-centered leadership looks like in practice.
Stay strong.
Episode 22