| Born in 1968 Lydia Hernandez the daughter of a migrant workers and a native of Rio Grande Valley- Texas begins her resilient path. Hernandez started her education at West Elementary School. After graduating from Mercedes High School in 1986, Lydia went on to attend the local University, Pan American University in Edinburgh, Texas pursuing a major in political science-pre law. In 1987, she transferred to Baylor University, in Waco, Texas. While at Baylor, she was elected to the Student Congress and was a member of the Student Senate. Lydia was an active member of the Young Democrats and President of the Hispanic Culture Association. After graduation, in 1993, she moves to Phoenix, AZ to enroll at ASU to work on her masters in Chicano studies.
She is hired by a local school district and she begins her voluntarism organizing work as a leader with the organization Valley Interfaith Project. This role got her to organize many civic engagement actions with local and national elected officials. It was thru this venue that she began organizing in and around the Immigration issue. This volunteer work got her to organize Latino families, local leaders, and elected officials, clergy and police authorities to provide testimony before many legislative and relevant committees.
In 2006 and 2007, she dedicated two years to discussing the issues that impact families, interviews were conducted in an effort to survey statewide organizations. The Arizona Coalition for Immigrant Rights was born out of those conversations in an effort to civically engage families in public discourse. Many organized actions took place around the state including the organizing of the April 2006 and 2007 massive marches that brought out 300,000 families to advocate for their families and sharing their stories. It was this effort that put Arizona on the map at the national level and for the first time, AZ was engaged in conversation with National groups about training and civic engagement that involved Citizen workshops, Voter registration and Get out the Vote efforts.
Lydia is currently the President of the Cartwright School District #83; she was elected to a 4-year term in 2010 and was the top vote getter. She has served on the board since 2002.
Under her board leadership, in 2010, the board made some critical decisions, as 13 out of 20 schools were underperforming. In 2012, the school district now has an overall grade of 'B.' Mrs. Hernandez and the board have proven that you can't continue to do the same thing and expect different results. |