CSU Latinx Leaders on the Journeys That Shaped Them

Mildred García
CSU Chancellor

​As a Latinx leader in higher education, how has your lived experience informed the impact you hope to make for students, faculty and staff?

G​rowing up in Brooklyn in a poor but richly diverse and proud neighborhood near the factories where my parents—Leopold and Lucia García—worked, there was a phrase they used so often that my siblings and I could recite it by heart: "La única herencia que una familia pobre le deja a sus hijos es una buena educación." ​ The only inheritance a poor family can leave its children is a good education.

But, ultimately, it was more than just a favorite expression. It became a deeply instilled value that has guided my life across decades. Thanks to my parents’ vision and sacrifice, I received that inheritance: a life transformed through the power of higher education. And now I have the profound honor of working alongside the CSU’s extraordinary faculty and staff to ensure that inheritance remains within reach for our nearly half a million students.

Over the course of my career, I’ve learned that higher education needs to be diligent, proactive and flexible in order to remain relevant and continue to deliver value as students, society and the economy evolve. And that has never been more true than right now, with higher education at an unprecedented inflection point. That is why—through CSU Forward​, our new Student Success Framework​, the Strategic Enrollment Management Framework and other co-created planning efforts—we are reimagining everything we do to ensure that a CSU degree continues to deliver that inheritance by adapting to changes in student preferences and needs, changes in the needs of our communities, changes in technology, and changes in our economy and the world of work.​

Mary Ann Villarreal
Interim CSUDH President

​As a Latinx leader in higher education, how has your lived experience informed the impact you hope to make for students, faculty and staff?

​As a young child, I watched my grandmother's fierce determination to speak her truths, even when so many tried to silence her. A woman of quiet conviction, she never missed an opportunity to vote, and she instilled in me a deep respect for civic engagement and the power of education. But I lived in the silences of her limited English and my limited Spanish. She and my grandfather raised me, and they were told that English was the language of acceptance, advancement and success. Once stuck between honoring my identity and navigating systems that rarely value it, today I am committed to creating educational environments where students feel both empowered and seen.​

Sharing my grandmother's deep sense of conviction, I lead with and through my values. I want students to find themselves in an institution that recognizes their potential, challenges them academically, and gives them opportunities to imagine a future larger than the one they may have thought possible. Access matters, but what happens after a student arrives matters just as much. Our responsibility is to create the conditions for students to flourish and to ensure that their education created meaningful possibilities. Thus, I place considerable emphasis on the importance of community. Faculty and staff are the people who make an institution's promises real every day. They deserve leadership that values their expertise, communicates with candor, invests wisely and creates a shared sense of purpose.

The impact I hope to make is to lead institutions where excellence and opportunity reinforce one another, where people know they matter, and where our collective work expands what is possible for the generations that follow.​

Richard A. Carvajal
Cal Poly Humboldt President

As a Latinx leader in higher education, how has your lived experience informed the impact you hope to make for students, faculty and staff?

Sixty years ago, my mother, a white woman from a traditional Los Angeles family, fell in love with my father, a man of Mexican descent from L.A.​'s housing projects. My mother's parents promptly disowned her for doing so. A generation later, when I fell in love with Cheryl, a young woman who looked remarkably like my mother, Cheryl's family broke off all ties with her. We've lived for more than three decades without the love and support of her parents, who never welcomed me in or welcomed her back home. Our story doesn't make us special, but it has shown our family what it's like to be thought of as different and to suffer because of it.

My first graduate assistantship was in multicultural affairs, and much of my ​work throughout my career has focused on increasing opportunities and support for students from diverse backgrounds. Time unfortunately does not always bring progress, and the need to support learners of all backgrounds has never been greater than it is today. It's one reason I am so proud to be part of a CSU that holds inclusion as a core value and manifests it every day in our actions. Even more, to be helping to lead this work in Humboldt County, where my parents—one white, one Latino—raised their young children, is extremely personal for me, and I am honored to join our faculty and staff in helping the next generation of students whose stories all too closely resemble my own​​.

Vanya Quiñones
Cal Poly Pomona President

As a Latinx leader in higher education, how has your lived experience informed the impact you hope to make for students, faculty and staff?

My grandmother always used to say, "Lo único que puedes darte para un futuro es una buena educación.” The only thing you can truly give yourself for the future is a good education. That belief has guided my life and my career. It is also at the heart of our mission [at the CSU]: to ensure our students have the education, opportunity and support they need to achieve their dreams.​

Hispanic families deeply value an education as one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves and future generations. My own family instilled in me the belief that education creates opportunity and independence, and provides a strong foundation for achieving success regardless of field or focus.​

That perspective shapes the impact I hope to make every day. I want students to see higher education not simply as a place where they belong, but as a place where they can imagine what is possible, pursue the future they want to create, and have the support to achieve it.

S. Terri Gómez​
Cal State San Bernardino President

As a Latinx leader in higher education, how has your lived experience informed the impact you hope to make for students, faculty and staff?

I am a proud Latinx leader in the vital field of higher education who was born and raised in Southern California’s Inland Empire. This region and community have remained at the center of my entire life. I love its rich history and traditions along with its incredible potential.

I am a working class, first-generation college student who initially attended community college and then transferred to a four-year university to complete my undergraduate degree. I had to figure out the pathway to a Ph.D. so that I could work in higher ed. As a result, I understand the students who choose to attend an outstanding public university like CSUSB. Their dreams echo mine.

I am the youngest of six children of Mexican immigrants from Jalostotitlán, Jalisco who came to this country for a better life. They settled in the Inland Empire, where I still live today and where I have raised my own family.

My parents always taught us that the path to that “better life” was facilitated through educación, which is a broader holistic, moral education deeply rooted in community, treating others with respect and dignity, a deep faith, an abiding ethic of hard work and a commitment to social justice.

I am committed to bettering the lives of everyone who lives here, in the Inland Empire​, through the power of education. I can do that at and through CSUSB. Because higher ed matters.​

Adela de la Torre
San Diego State President

​As a Latinx leader in higher education, how has your lived experience informed the impact you hope to make for students, faculty and staff?

I was raised in the East Bay of California by my grandmother, who immigrated from Mexico to the U.S. My mother was a single mother, who worked as an elementary school teacher and​ whose sole income supported our family of four. Both women shaped me profoundly and their deep belief in the power of education was critical to my future success. However, one value my mother held above all others was the importance of kindness. She would often say to me only weak people destroy others to build themselves up.​

Her mantra of kindness and thoughtful purpose in action defines how I lead SDSU.

As president of San Diego State University, I want all of our students to have the opportunity to discover what they are capable of achieving, but without losing their sense of purpose and connectivity with their community. Creating a culture of kindness, where​ students feel that they belong and truly respect each other, builds an environment where faculty and staff can inspire and challenge them and still maintain those human qualities needed to navigate the unknown challenges of the future.

I want that same sense of possibility and kindness for our faculty and staff. SDSU must be a place where people feel valued, where their contributions matter and where they feel heard. Our collective success depends on their brilliant intelligence and creativity, which can only occur if respectful human connection is nurtured and celebrated.​

To me, one of the great responsibilities of leadership is creating a culture of success rooted in our human experience and connectivity. The impact of kindness is central to this success. SDSU is not simply reflected in what we accomplish as an institution with traditional metrics, but in how we can create a community where human ties and respect matter.