Dear ALMA Family,

As we prepare to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, I am grateful for the opportunity to write to you for the first time as Director of the ALMA Initiative.

This season invites us to celebrate the histories, cultures, faith, contributions, and stories of Latino communities. It also feels like a meaningful time for me to begin this new chapter with ALMA because this work is deeply connected to my own story.

Many years ago, I was an English learner sitting in a Catholic school classroom in New York City. I was learning English while also learning everything else expected of me as a student. Like so many multilingual learners, what I knew and what I was capable of were not always visible through the language I was still acquiring.

At the time, my language development was misunderstood. I was misdiagnosed and referred for special education services and later for speech services. I remember knowing there was more inside of me than I was able to communicate. Now, as an educator, I understand how easily language differences can be mistaken for learning deficits when educators do not have the knowledge, tools, or support they need.

I have carried that experience with me throughout my life and career. The child I once was in that New York City classroom is never very far from my mind when I think about the students and families ALMA serves today.

Every day, Latino and multilingual learners enter Catholic schools across the country carrying their languages, cultures, faith, family traditions, experiences, and dreams with them. Our responsibility is not simply to help them learn English. It is to see them fully, to recognize their strengths, understand the difference between language acquisition and learning needs, and create schools where their home language and culture are understood as assets rather than obstacles.

That is why the work of ALMA is so close to my heart.

I want ALMA to continue growing as a trusted partner for Catholic schools across the country, forming educators and leaders, strengthening instruction for multilingual learners, developing Latino leadership, deepening family and community engagement, and helping schools build systems that allow every student to thrive.

We do not begin that work from scratch. I am grateful for the faculty, staff, mentors, educators, alumni, partners, and friends who have shaped ALMA over the years. What we build next rests on a foundation many people have helped lay, through their expertise, commitment, and, perhaps most importantly, the relationships they have formed along the way.

Those relationships have always been at the heart of ALMA because lasting change happens through people. It happens when a teacher recognizes the difference between a language need and a learning disability. It happens when a principal asks not, “How can this family fit into our school?” but “How will their presence make our community stronger?” It happens when a Latino educator begins to see a path toward leadership in the Church. And it happens when a multilingual child walks into a Catholic school knowing, without question, that they belong.

That is the future I hope we continue building together.

Hispanic Heritage Month gives us a special opportunity to celebrate the contributions Latino communities make to our schools, our Church, and our country. But that recognition cannot be confined to a month. It should be part of the everyday life of our schools: in what we teach, whose voices we listen to, how we welcome families, how we form leaders, and how we recognize the gifts already present in our communities.