Speaker Bios

Executive Director, Wellbeing and Support Services

Dr. Virginia Castro serves as Superintendent of the Lawndale Elementary School District, bringing 27 years of experience in public education and a strong commitment to educational equity and student success; she holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree, a Juris Doctor, and an Ed.D. in Organizational Leadership from the University of La Verne. She has served as a classroom teacher, resource teacher, assistant principal, principal, and district leader, including roles as Special Education Director, Director of Instruction, and Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services, and has led the implementation of dual-immersion programs, multi-tiered systems of support, and innovative initiatives that earned multiple California Distinguished Schools and a National Blue Ribbon School. A fluent Spanish speaker and former English learner, Dr. Castro is dedicated to expanding opportunity and ensuring all students thrive academically, socially, and culturally.

Lakisha Clark is the Principal of Orville Wright Middle School in the Los Angeles Unified School District and brings more than 27 years of experience in public education. She previously served for six years as Assistant Principal at Venice High School and has led Wright Middle School as principal for the past five years, focusing on strengthening school culture and supporting student wellbeing. Throughout her career in LAUSD, she has worked to expand opportunities and support systems for students and their families. Clark is an alumna of Loyola Marymount University’s College of Business Administration.

Jolie Delja is the Executive Director of AIM, a national nonprofit advancing youth mental health by connecting scientific research, youth-led insight, and real-world implementation. She brings more than 20 years of experience in behavioral health research and community-based program development, and is passionate about strengthening the systems that support young people. Jolie is a proud LMU alumna and graduate of the Harvard School of Public Health.

Dr. Estrada contributes actively to the scholarship of counselor education with an emphasis on biculturalism and bilingualism. Dr. Estrada also studies traumatic stress among sexual and gender minorities and Latine immigrants. His work has been published in outlets such as the Journal of Counseling Psychology, Hispanic Higher Education, and Latinos and Education. Dr. Estrada also leads an annual course in Mexico City and in partnership with Universidad Iberoamericana. He is trained as a counseling psychologist and is originally from Long Beach, California.

Drew Furedi is President & CEO of Para Los Niños, providing more than 25 years of expertise working in and managing non-profits and school systems. Prior to joining PLN, Drew served in leadership roles with LAUSD, led the LMU Family of Schools, and was a Partner with TNTP. He began his career as a teacher in Baltimore Public Schools with Teach for America and has focused on equity and access to comprehensive education and support for all youth throughout his career. Drew holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from UCSB, a Master’s degree in Public Administration from USC, and a Doctorate in Educational Leadership for Social Justice from Loyola Marymount University. He is a Pahara-Aspen Education Fellow (Cohort XVI), a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, a past member of the All Children Thrive – CA Equity Advisory Group and currently serves as a Board Member for Community Partners.

Margarita Luna is the Strategic Implementation Lead at The California Endowment (TCE). Since joining TCE in 2007, she has held several leadership roles, including Managing Director for the South Region and Health Systems teams, where she oversaw investments across Southern California and led a statewide portfolio focused on transforming health systems to be community-centered and equity-driven.

In her current role, Margarita guides the integration and execution of TCE’s bridge strategy and health justice philanthropy approach in the Systems Transformation team, aligning culture, structure and practice that informs and guides strategy, implementation, and power-building investments across California regions and system areas to advance systems transformation. Her work centers racial justice, community self-determination, and shifting public systems toward prevention, healing, and equity.

Prior to TCE, Margarita served as a Pedro Zamora Fellow with AIDS United, a Keck–Vivian Weinstein Child Advocacy Fellow, and a Senior Social Worker at Public Counsel among other roles advancing health and well-being in communities. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for Southern California Grantmakers.

Margarita holds a B.A., M.P.H., and M.S.W. from UCLA and is a Certified Professional and Somatic Coach.

Angelica Salas is an immigrant from Durango, Mexico. She came to the United States as a child to reunite with her parents, who came to provide a better life for their family. Angelica comes to her understanding of immigrants and immigration firsthand, as she and her entire family lived in the country undocumented, experienced deportation, and were able to legalize their status. In 2008, Angelica became a U.S. citizen. She makes Pasadena, California her home, the first city she arrived in as a child. She is married to Mayron Payes, an immigrant from El Salvador, and has two children, Ruben and Maya Payes.

Angelica joined CHIRLA in 1995 and became CHIRLA’s Executive Director in 1999. In her role, shehas transformed CHIRLA into a mass membership immigrant-led organization that empowers immigrants and their families to win local, state, and national policies that advance their human, civil, and labor rights. She has grown CHIRLA into one of the nation’s largest and most effective immigrant rights organizations that organize, advocates, educates, and provides legal services to allimmigrants. She has spearheaded ambitious statewide and national campaigns to expand immigrantrights. She has helped found organizations and coalitions to advocate for immigrant workers, youth, and families. Among her achievements are: winning in-state, financial aid and grant programs for California’s undocumented students, establishing day-laborer centers that become national models, winning drivers’ licenses for undocumented drivers, decoupling local police departments from immigration enforcement, expanding access to immigrant legal services, and winning Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

Angelica is a state and national leader in the advocacy for immigration reform and immigrant justice. She was instrumental in the formation of Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) and the National Partnership for New Americans (NPNA), two of the country’s largest immigrant rights coalitions.

Angelica is a recognized grassroots leader who plays a national leadership role in all major immigration reform campaigns. She serves as a national spokesperson for immigrant communities and immigrant rights campaigns. Angelica has been sought for expert responses from the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Univision, Telemundo, NPR, and more. Recently, Angelica’s work led to the House of Representatives passage of the Dream and Promise Act of 2019 and the Dream and Promise Act of 2021, a bill to give people with DACA and TPS a path to citizenship.

She graduated from Occidental College with a B.A. in History and a B.A. in Sociology in 1993. In 2007, Occidental College awarded her an Honorary Doctorate for her many contributions making her one of the youngest people to earn such an honor in the college’s history. Angelica serves on Board of Directors for California Wellness Foundation, National Partnership for New Americans (NPNA), America’s Voice, Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, UNITE-LA, and is Board President of Californians for Human Immigrant Leadership Action Fund (CHIRLA Action Fund).

Estela Zarate, Ph.D., is a nationally recognized higher education leader whose commitment to student success, educational access and equity, and community-centered research embodies the Loyola Marymount University mission of equity in action. She is the first dean of Latinx heritage to be named at the university. She brings to LMU nearly two decades of experience as an academic leader and scholar at California State University, Fullerton, the University of California Irvine, and other institutions of higher education.

Prior to joining LMU, Zarate was a visiting senior faculty fellow at the Diana Natalicio Institute for Hispanic Student Success at the University of Texas, El Paso. She took the fellowship at UTEP while on leave from her role as professor in the department of educational leadership at California State University, Fullerton. In that role she held various leadership and administrative positions, including Vice Provost of Academic Affairs, coordinator of the school administration preparation program in the College of Education, chair of the university-wide Planning, Resource, and Budget Committee, and Academic Senator. As Vice Provost, she led and designed faculty and student success initiatives. She also oversaw a state-wide consortium of programs for formerly incarcerated college students and led the work to repatriate Native American human remains and cultural artifacts.

Zarate’s scholarship has examined the trajectory of immigrant students and students of color in U.S. schools and colleges, including the connections between schools and families and the experiences of multilingual learners. She co-edited a volume on educational interventions for migrant students. She has also written about and developed professional learning opportunities to improve teaching for first-generation college students. More recently, she has also examined school leader preparation instruction to understand how to incorporate anti-racist and ethical leadership principles.

Like many of the students we serve in our public schools, Zarate was classified as an English language learner when she started school and was the first in her family to attend college. She earned a B.A. in mathematical economic analysis at Rice University and a Ph.D. in education at the University of California Los Angeles. She moved to Los Angeles to attend UCLA and has called the City of Angels her home for nearly 25 years.