We recently connected with Stephanie Parra and have shared our conversation below.

Stephanie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

Growing up, I never felt poor and underprivileged. Our home was full of love and encouragement that we received from our parents. A young couple, Oscar and Dora Parra, Mexican immigrants originally from Sonora, raising a family of four in Yuma, Arizona. From an early age, I remember my father being gone a lot, working long hours. Back then, I didn’t realize exactly what my dad did to earn a living, I just knew he was away from home often. As I grew older, my dad would take my siblings and I with him to work. “I want you to know what I have had to do to earn money, because I don’t want you to have to do this work when you grow up. You have to go to college and get a degree, that is your way out of here,” my dad would tell us.

As a kid, I never really understood why my dad insisted so heavily on us doing well in school and going to college, but I heard him and followed his advice. Now as an adult, my father and I speak often about the challenges he faced growing up. I know now that he worked 18-20 hours a day in farm labor so that we didn’t have to worry about where our next meal would come from, or if we would have a place to sleep at night. Four-hundred dollars per week was my dad’s income when I was a child, and he never asked for help, we made due with what we had. I know now that my entire life, my dad has been focused on sharing the lessons he learned on his journey, and he made sure that we took a different path forward.

I often get asked why I am so passionate about this to work. Why I wholeheartedly believe that educational equity is the solution to creating real change for the communities growing up like I did. My answer is simple, it’s because of my dad. His dream and desire for a better life for us. His perseverance and resilient spirit that never gave up on his dream to achieve a good quality of life for his family, and his never ending love and support to help me achieve my dreams and goals in life. It is because of my dad that I do this work to advance opportunity and justice in our communities. Not every child has an Oscar Parra in their life, but every child deserves an advocate who will fight for their futures just like my dad did for me.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

It was late 2012 and I felt like I had finally had enough with the anti-immigrant/ anti-Latino rhetoric that Arizona politicians had been spewing for years. This was two years after the passage of Senate Bill 1070, and shortly after the 2012 re-election of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The anti-immigration sentiment had been part of Arizona long before Trump came around.

At the time, I was working for a national team at Teach For America and my manager, Andrea, and I discussed the possibility of me moving out of Arizona given the flexibility of my position. I expressed the desire to live in a place where I would feel welcome and valued as a Latina in the community. The anti-immigrant political rhetoric in Arizona was unnerving, emotionally exhausting and, unfortunately, successful at making me feel like I did not belong in the state that I was born and raised in. Andrea’s response to my desire to leave the state, has stayed with me all these years later, “Stephanie, you can leave, like everyone else who gets frustrated with Arizona, or you can stay here and create the change our community desperately needs.”

I thought of the countless friends and colleagues over the years who came and went from Arizona just as Andrea described. I thought of the young Latina teacher from Texas who had shared her frustrations with me about our state’s “English Only” policies and mandates to segregate English Learners. “I don’t know how you’ve lived here your entire life,” she said, “I just can’t do it anymore.” So much talent has left Arizona because we have failed to nurture and develop our local communities. Instead our political environment has managed to make Latinos feel unwelcome in our own backyards. But Andrea was right, leaving wouldn’t solve anything, I had to stay. And as cheesy as it may sound, I had to be the change I wanted to see in my community.

Once I realized I had the agency to create the change I wanted to see in Phoenix and across Arizona, there was nothing and no one who could stop me. I found a community in leadership programs like Valle del Sol’s Hispanic Leadership Institute, New American Leaders and Valley Leadership. I positioned myself to serve in leadership roles where I could influence outcomes and decisions that impacted students and families like me.

Investing in and developing my leadership really ignited my pathway towards being names Executive Director at ALL In Education and serving on the Phoenix Union Governing Board. It took recognizing that I didn’t need to leave my home to feel welcome, rather it was on me to create a welcoming environment. Most importantly, I realized that we are the leaders we need to build a better, more inclusive and vibrant Arizona.

Every time I share that I joined ALL In Education in April 2020, I get wide-eyed looks staring back. Reflecting back it was a crazy choice to leave a stable career and income to pursue a dream in the middle of a global pandemic. But it has never been my style to not take opportunities that I know will advance the impact I could have in Arizona. In this new path that I have chosen to take, my commitment is to continue leading and living fearlessly, taking bold and courageous actions to advance opportunity and justice for our communities. As Executive Director of ALL In Education, I have the opportunity to find and develop leaders in our community who are willing to join me in fearlessly leading the change our communities need across Arizona.

There is so much to celebrate in four years of operation as an organization. We have been able to effectively model what it means to include and elevate Latino voices and perspectives to address the pressing needs of our community. When I started in the role, our Founder and Board Chairman, Luis Avila, and I had a conversation about how we wanted to plan the first 90 days of my time. It was important for both of us to ensure that we focused our work on meeting the needs of our community in the midst of the pandemic. We knew the moment that schools closed, that the Latino community would be disproportionately affected because of the inequities that already existed in our educational system. We were already seeing the national reports that Latino families were being infected with the coronavirus at higher rates, and we knew that educational attainment does not happen in a vacuum.

With this in mind, I envisioned a pipeline of programs that help cultivate and build up the next generation of leaders. Through my leadership, ALL In Education has designed three leadership development programs that target three unique community groups: Grassroots, Grass-middles, and Grasstops. The Parent Educator Academy (PEA), Adelante Fellowship, and LISTO Academy. Each of these programs are aimed at developing values-driven leaders and equipping them with the tenacity to spearhead transformative strategies within the community.

These programs were intentionally designed to be a pipeline – where each program lays the foundation for the next. This design was created with the goal of weaving in knowledge, lived experiences and leadership at every level to ensure that our program participants are equipped to be the rising decision makers in their communities that will enact the systemic change needed to ensure we improve student outcomes. Since 2020, we have successfully graduated over 600 participants, with our Parent Educator Academy having the most graduate at 550.

Alumni from our programs have gone on to serve on local schools board and boards of community organizations. Others have been appointed to Superintendent positions or other leadership positions at our partner school districts. We are also witnessing parents and caregivers graduating from the PEA more confident and motivated to pursue their own educational and professional goals. Some have gone on to secure full time positions at the child’s school, others have re-enrolled in college to complete their degree, and some have enrolled themselves in English courses or completed their GED.

We are witnessing leadership being developed at all levels in our school environment which is creating the unique conditions for cross collaboration like we have never seen between schools, parents and community. Our programs are establishing that there is a leader in all of us, we just need to begin viewing our Latino and BIPOC communities as assets worthy of investment and respect.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Working as a lobbyist, a colleague once expressed that I cared too much about Latino children and community and that there was no public will to support this population. This left me feeling a lot of different emotions about my work and efforts. What this also provided was the fuel and determination for the work that I do now. Not only has the conversations in communities around Latinos shifted, it has also began to take shape within our systems and leadership profiles. While we have still a lot of work to do, I know that Arizona will in the near future become a model state for the way we include and approach diverse leadership.

One thing I have learned over the years, strong leadership is not about a position or title. It is about the person, their values and how they carry out their work. Strong and effective leaders are courageous, compassionate and bold in their convictions to create change for their communities. They lead with their values, not their egos. They stay connected with their community, take the time to assess needs and focus their solutions on what is important to improve outcomes for those they serve. We need values-based, daring leaders to serve in education and across all systems.

If we are going to create transformational change for our communities, we need values-based, daring leaders that understand lived experiences how their decision making impacts those they serve. We need leaders who will be thoughtful about their practices, programs and policies with their communities in mind. We need leaders who are willing to face hard truths about the history of our systems, and still boldly commit to be the change we need across our systems. It will be imperative for us to focus our efforts on ensuring that the communities most impacted by the inequities that exist and have a voice and are effectively represented. This is what drives my work and leadership at ALL In Education.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Over the years, my efforts have gone into becoming the leader that not only talks the talk but also walks the walk. I ensure that my expectations of what leadership should look like are embodied through my leadership. This focus has been pivotal in building my reputation as an individual but has also been critical in building the reputation of ALL In Education.

The organization has become a model for engaging parents, caregivers, leaders and all community members. The practices that are elevated through ALL In Education are also modeled by the organization. Because of this, I feel that both the organization and I myself as an individual has been essential in having influence and impact in the community.

This with consistency in messaging and practices has been what has established my reputation and that of ALL In Education.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://allineducation.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allinedaz https://www.instagram.com/_stephparra
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/allinedaz https://www.facebook.com/stephanieparra08
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinedaz https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-parra-m-ed-41094744/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/allinedaz https://twitter.com/_stephparra
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@allinedaz