In honor of Women’s History Month, we’re proud to spotlight the incredible women who help lead and shape our work every day. This month, we sat down with our Deputy Director, Araceli, to reflect on her journey, the experiences that have shaped her leadership, and the impact she continues to make within our community. Her story is a powerful reminder of the strength, vision, and dedication that drives meaningful change.
Women’s History Month is about honoring those who came before us. Who are the women who shaped your leadership journey, and how do their lessons show up in the way you lead at LIFT today?
The women who raised me were never featured on magazine covers or highlighted in history books, they were in my home and my community, shaping me with their lived wisdom. As a Chicana and an immigrant daughter, I was formed by my mother and my abuelas, women whose strength was quiet but fierce, whose faith carried them through systems never meant to see or support them. They survived, they provided, and they loved with dignity and that taught me that leadership isn’t a title,it’s an obligation to lift others as you climb, to speak truth even when it’s hard, to work con ganas (with ambition), and to always pay it forward.
As I moved through school and into my career, I found more women of color who showed me what it meant to lead boldly while carrying our communities’ dreams on our backs. They reminded me that our voices, shaped by migration, by struggle, by fear and by resilience are instruments for change. Our lived experience isn’t something to tuck away; it’s something to lead with.
Those lessons are with me every day at LIFT. I lead with relational accountability, deep listening, and the conviction that our work matters when people feel seen, respected, affirmed, and whole. I try to build the kinds of spaces the women in my life created for me, spaces where people can grow, heal, take up space, and believe in their own power to thrive and feel safe.
As a leader of color, how has your lived experience influenced the way you think about economic mobility and the work LIFT does alongside families?
My lived experience isn’t something separate from my leadership; it is the lens that shapes everything I see and do. Growing up in an immigrant, working-class Mexican family taught me early that economic mobility has never been just about “working hard.” My family worked relentlessly. What we lacked wasn’t effort; it was access, opportunity, and systems built with our communities in mind.
I know what it feels like to navigate systems you didn’t choose, to translate paperwork at an age you had no business doing, to advocate when doors closed, and to keep dreaming even when resources were scarce. Those memories are with me in every conversation about policy, program design, and decision making. In every moment, I consider what these choices mean for our members’ experiences and their futures.
That’s why, for me, the work at LIFT is not only about economic mobility; it is about economic liberation. LIFT parents need systems that recognize their brilliance, honor their power, and remove barriers that were intentionally placed in their way. I carry my community with me in this work, and it fuels my commitment to building a world where our families’ strengths, stories, and dreams are finally met with real opportunity.
LIFT centers families as experts in their own lives. How do you carry that same belief in your leadership — especially when making big decisions that impact our members and staff?
For me, centering families as experts is not just a program strategy, it’s an ethic of leadership. It’s rooted in trusting the lived wisdom and experiences our families carry, honoring their insights, and knowing that proximity brings a clarity that hierarchy simply never will.
In my leadership, that means bringing staff and members into decision-making early and often. It means slowing down even when urgency wants to push us forward, to ask: Who might we be leaving out? Are we making a choice that reflects our values, or just our timelines? And if we move ahead with this decision, could we unintentionally cause harm?
I try to lead with openness, humility, and co-creation. That includes acknowledging when we don’t have all the answers and being transparent about the “why” behind major decisions. Because when we honor people’s agencies, whether they’re staff or members, we also build trust, stability, and belonging.
And ultimately, that’s what makes LIFT’s work transformative, not transactional. It’s what allows us to build a community where families feel seen, respected, and powerful.
What advice would you give to young women of color who want to lead in spaces that don’t always reflect their identities?
You belong in every room you walk into, not because the room validates you, but because your presence expands what is possible. Your lived experience is not a barrier or something to overcome; it is a source of brilliance, intuition, power, and leadership that this world desperately needs.
Don’t shrink yourself to fit into systems that were never built with you in mind. Bring your full self, your culture, your voice, your story, your community, and the prayers and resilience of the ancestors who walked before you. Let all of that be your strength, your compass, and your grounding.
Seek out mentors who pour into you and who lift you up without hesitation, When doubt tries to creep in, remember that you are the future so many of us dreamed of.
And for those of us lucky enough in leadership positions, it’s not enough to open the door, we must redesign the entire building and make sure the doors and windows stay open for everyone who comes after us. That means creating intentional leadership pathways for women of color, building structures of mentorship and coaching, addressing internal inequities with honesty, and cultivating cultures where women of color can lead boldly without codeswitching, apologizing, or carrying the weight of representation alone.
When we invest in women of color, we are investing in the future of our organizations, our communities, and the movements we hope to build. And for me, it’s personal. This is the legacy I am passing down to my two daughters, one where they grow up knowing they are powerful, worthy, and meant to lead.