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Lizette Torres, Director of After School Programs Growing up in Philadelphia, Lizette Torres struggled academically in high school, but her dedicated mom worked hard to ensure her success. "She beat the doors down to find someone to help me succeed," Ms. Torres said of her mother. With her own dedication, Ms. Torres pushed her guidance counselor to give her the support she needed to get into a four-year university rather than a two-year city college. In high school and college, Ms. Torres struggled with her own racial identity. She wasn't easily identified as having the Puerto Rican heritage she does, and it drove her to take an outsize pride in her heritage that brought her to lead Latino youth, student, and cultural groups. Even now as a working professional adult, she participates actively in cultural activities. In leadership roles of student organizations, she worked to ensure her younger Latino peers would succeed in school, and has spent the rest of her life helping young people discover their deep-rooted cultural identities and use them as a place of strength from which to succeed. When asked why she feels called to her work, she says that she wants to "wrap these young people with as much support as I received from my mother and my many mentors."
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