Josephine F. Garza

Josephine F. Garza is the Executive Director for the National Latino Children’s Institute (NLCI), the only organization dedicated solely to focusing on issues impacting Latino children and to building healthy communities for Latino children and their families.

>>  Join me as I discuss with Josie how her career has progressed and brought her to this position.

Josie was born and raised in San Antonio Texas, the oldest of three children.  She is thirteenth generation Tejana and the first in her family to attend college.

Ms. Garza holds a BA in Elementary Education with two certifications, one in early childhood education and the other in bilingual education. She also holds an MA in Educational Psychology with an emphasis in cross-cultural counseling and communications.

Josie began her career as a bilingual kindergarten teacher with the Houston Independent School District then with the Edgewood Independent School District in San Antonio, where she also began her career as a middle school counselor, specifically in the area of drug prevention education and gang intervention.

>>  I’ll be taking with her about her experiences in the school system and what needs led her to her other positions.

She has worked with the Intercultural Development Research Association as an equity specialist for the Desegregation Assistance Center-South Central Collaborative in the areas of gender, race, and national origin equity for Federal Region VI.

Josie was Director for Project Pals, a National FFA (formerly Future Farmer’s of America) Mentoring Program that developed a national mentoring program for non-traditional youth involved in agriculture.

She was also Senior Program Officer for the National Training Institute for Community Youth Work at the Academy for Educational Development in Washington, DC.

>>  What has Josie learned from her different positions?  Who has she worked with and what led her from one position to the next?

Prior to coming on staff fulltime in 2002, Ms. Garza had worked as an independent consultant with the NLCI since 1997, the year it was founded. She participated in focus groups that began to look at cultural competencies in accessing healthcare, which lead to a report submitted to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on barriers and solutions to accessing children’s health.

Josie was part of a team that designed culturally appropriate programs for NLCI for Corazon de mi Vida a child passenger safety initiative, Onda Sana an HIV/AIDS prevention program for young Latinos ages 10-18 and Salsa, Sabor y Salud a healthy lifestyles program for Latino families with children ages 3-12.

>>  From the study and research Josie has seen, what are the key policy objectives that her organization works on?

Prior to 2002, Ms. Garza was co-founder and served as Co-Executive Director over three years for Youth Advocates of California, Inc. in Los Angeles, an organization dedicated to building a positive youth community that taught young people how to access resources, and how to create a support system for each other.

Over most of her career, Josie has been actively involved with organizations dedicated to empowering and protecting the rights of young people and their families who have been disenfranchised, most of whom are minority (predominantly Latino) and poor, and many of whom end up in the juvenile justice system.

>>  What drives Josie to do the work she does?  What has she learned from working with children of all ages and from a variety of backgrounds?

She has three nieces, two nephews and one grand-nephew.  She has lived in Houston, TX, Washington, DC and Los Angeles, CA.  She currently lives in a little A-frame house built in 1929 with her two rescued dogs Troche y Moche in San Antonio.