Dr. Carla España is a member of The Educator Collaborative network. Read her full bio here or request her support for consulting or speaking engagements. 

Carla is an expert on bilingual education and biliteracy practices across K-12 and higher education.  She supports schools across the United States and around the world, with experience supporting educators and students in urban, suburban, rural and international schools.  She is the Coordinator, of the Language Series, Supervised Fieldwork Advisor & Course Instructor at Bank Street College Graduate School of Education.  Carla’s research studies the ways bilingual students make meaning of their schooling, focusing on issues of translanguaging and culturally sustaining pedagogy in reading and writing workshop classrooms. Her research interests include bilingual education, translanguaging, culturally sustaining pedagogy, arts integration, Latinx education, teaching for social justice, curriculum development, and teacher preparation.

Dr. Luz Yadira Herrera is an Assistant Professor of multilingual and multicultural education in the Kremen School of Education and Human Development at California State University, Fresno. Luz received her Ph.D. from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She taught emergent bilingual children in NYC public schools for seven years. In addition, she taught undergraduate and graduate courses in bilingualism in education, race in schooling, K-12 language and literacy, and theory and methods courses in TESOL and bilingual education at the City College of New York, Long Island University, and Brooklyn College. Her teaching and research centers culturally and linguistically sustaining approaches to teaching emergent bilinguals, translanguaging and critical pedagogies, and bilingual education policy.  Follow her on Twitter @Dra_LuzYadira. 

Leticia Hernández-Linares is the author of Mucha Muchacha, Too Much Girl (Tía Chucha, 2015). Mucha Muchacha was a 2014 finalist for the Montoya Poetry Prize and the Crab Orchard First Book Award.  Together with Rubén Martínez and Héctor Tobar, she edited  The Wandering Song:  Central American Writing in the United States (Tía Chucha, 2017).  A four-time San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist grantee, she was named a San Francisco Library Laureate, and was shortlisted for San Francisco Poet Laureate in 2017. 

Hernández-Linares has been living, working, and writing in the Mission District since 1995.   For over twenty years, she has been merging music and performance with her writing to communicate a poetry that crosses genre boundaries and geopolitical borders.  Interdisciplinary at the core, she has collaborated with many talented visual artists and incorporates digital media, audience interaction, costume and props, and installation in her writing and art.  She has performed, and presented panels and keynotes  throughout the country and El Salvador.  A 2011 Creative Work Fund awardee, she envisioned and led an interdisciplinary collaboration about motherhood with teen mothers in her neighborhood  Dar a Luz.  She is the founder of the ten year event series and artist collaborative: Amate: Women Painting Stories and has led various interdisciplinary projects such as  Mission Mortaja

A special focus in her career has involved convening and collaborating with other Salvadoran and Central American artists and writers.  While working in journalism, she worked with the Izote Vos book project, and authored the Central American section of an Ethnic Studies textbook.  She participated in Foro 2000, an artivist delegation to El Salvador;  performed in Epicentrico: Rico Epicentro (A Night of Central American Performance) at Highways (L.A). Her poetic, interactive installation, Papeleo, was featured in the group exhibition, Mourning and Scars (S.F.).  She also performed at the Encuentro Poético: Salvadoran-American Poets at the Smithsonian in D.C., and Variedades: Little Central America  sponsored by Grand Performances in L.A.. She has worked on numerous projects in Washington D.C.: taught an online bilingual poetry class at the Oyster-Adams Bilingual School; performed as poet in residence with Sol & Soul; hosted the Wandering Song book launch at Busboys and Poets; invited as guest of honor at Hechizo, Arte y Poesía at La Casa de la Cultura.  Her bilingual poetry appears in La Piscucha Magazine, Theatre Under My Skin: Contemporary Salvadoran Poetry  Kalina Press  and in Poeta Soy and her work was included in the first convening of Central American women writers in El Salvador in 2019: Otro modo de ser.

Robert Liu-Trujillo is a life long Bay Area resident. Born in Oakland California, he’s the child of student activists who watched lots of science fiction and took him to many demonstrations. Always drawing, Rob grew up to be an artist falling in love with graffiti, fine art, illustration, murals, and children’s books. In that order, sort of. Through storytelling he’s been able to scratch the surface of so many untold stories. Rob is the author and illustrator of Furqan’s First Flat Top. He’s a dad of a teenage boy and a brand new baby girl. He loves ice cream and his wife who laughs big and corrects his grammar every chance she gets. Down with the system and soggy french fries!

Rob is a co-founder of The Trust Your Struggle Collective, a contributor to The Social Justice Childrens Bk Holiday Fair, The Bull Horn Blog, Rad Dad,  Muphoric Sounds, and the founder of Come Bien Books.

Mike Leyba is the Development Director for City Life Vida Urbana.  Originally from Los Angeles, he became an activist during the Campaign Against Prop 8. He’s managed multiple political campaigns, both in Boston and Los Angeles, with his primary areas of focus being social marketing, branding and creative communications. He’s worked for social-justice focused groups in Boston, building communications strategies and amplifying their work to community residents, foundations, donors, media, and elected officials.