Lucia Lozana Robledo '21 and Mirella Cisneros Perez '19 are helping to create a significant impact in North Carolina for the next generation of leaders.
Two Elon alumnae who benefitted from the programs of LatinxEd, a North Carolina-based education initiative, during their high school and college years are now supporting the work of the organization as members of its team.
Lucia Lozana Robledo ’21 and Mirella Cisneros Perez ’19 are both curriculum and program specialists for LatinxEd, which, since 2022, has been located on Elon’s campus through a partnership with the Dr. Jo Watts Williams School of Education. The goal of the educational initiative in North Carolina is to provide targeted, multi-year support to Latinx students and immigrant families aspiring for greater opportunities in higher education.
LatinxEd, founded by Elain Utin and Ricky Hurtado in 2018, has a mission to give back to Latinx leadership and help create a new generation of leaders. Before joining the LatinxEd team, Robledo and Perez were both impacted by the organization’s important work.
In high school, Lozana Robledo was a scholar through the North Carolina Scholars Latino Initiative (SLI). SLI is a college access and success program that was founded at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2001 and laid the foundation for the creation of what would become LatinxEd.
“I have known Ricky and Elaine, who are the LatinxEd co-founders, since I was like 16. That is my sweet origin story,” said Lozana Robledo.
While attending Elon, Robledo applied and was awarded as a 20 under 20 student through LatinxEd and was named to the first cohort. Before Robledo started working for LatinxEd, she received the LatinxEd Fellowship, which is a statewide network providing leadership development to Latinx leaders in North Carolina.
“They were my dream place to work when I graduated,” said Robledo, who became a fellow through the Elon Year of Service Graduate Fellow program when there were no open full-time positions at LatinxEd.
Cisneros Perez found out about LatinxEd while she was a student at Elon, and LatinxEd launched its 20 under 20 awards program.
“It really intrigued me, so I just followed them and stayed connected in that way,” said Cisneros Perez. Her brother started working with LatinxEd a year later because he had worked with SLI. While Cisneros Perez was teaching in Durham, a position became available, and her brother shared the job description.
Both Cisneros Perez and Lozana Robledo now work as curriculum and program specialists for LatinxEd but have different focal points. Robledo creates curriculum, which includes thinking about the programming of the fellowship, what is being learned and how it is being learned. Establishing the curriculum helps to ensure that it reflects the needs of the fellows and reflects the way the community learns and interacts with each other. Lozana Robledo provides support especially during the summer with the curriculum. The summer is considered one of the heavier seasons of the fellowship with retreats.
“We do a lot of workshops with educational institutions and education partners, so I oversee the curriculum related to those workshops with educational institutions around supporting Latino student success,” said Lozana Robledo.
Cisneros Perez focuses on the fellowship through LatinxEd, which also touches on creating curriculum. The fellowship gives people the opportunity to study and learn from LatinxEd.
Lozana Robledo says LatinxEd wants to help create safe spaces for the Latinx community with help from the fellows, including healing for their personal development.
“The healing aspect of the work that we do is so beautiful to witness,” Lozana Robledo said. “Also, it’s healing that they can really lean into their culture and fully who they are when they are in space with us.”
LatinxEd is not just a space of practice for fellows who are there to learn and study, but also for staff who are there to help guide. Cisneros Perez says the staff are also on the journey of healing, learning and growing as individuals.
“We very much practice what we preach as staff members. We do not ask any fellow or anybody we work with to do something we have not tried ourselves and modeled ourselves to,” said Cisneros Perez.
LatinxEd is a place that welcomes all who are wanting and willing to strive for something more. It is a place for all generations to come and pursue educational pathways and diverse types of careers. The organization wants to inform the Latinx community that they have more choices than possibly their parents or older generations had.
“We need multiple people representing all kinds of communities. We are also what it means to have this impact, to help create the conditions for our education system and to truly reflect the cultural needs of the different communities,” said Lozana Robledo.