Club Meeting: Empowering Families in the Community

Dr. Mayra Gómez was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. At 15, her family moved to Oregon where she graduated from Roosevelt High School in North Portland. She obtained a bachelor of science in public policy planning and a bachelor of art in sociology and Spanish from the University of Oregon in 2002. She went on to pursue her master’s degree in urban education at the University of California-Los Angeles. She began her teaching career as a middle school social studies teacher in Los Angeles.

Once in Oregon she served as the AVID coordinator, social studies and English language development teacher at Gresham High School. As an administrator, she has held the positions of assistant principal at Reynolds High School and Federal Programs Coordinator at Centennial School District.  She earned a doctoral degree in Educational Leadership and Curriculum Development from Lewis and Clark College in the spring of 2017 and is currently the director of college and career readiness in West Linn-Wilsonville School District. She remains active in the Gresham community as Vice Chair of the Gresham-Barlow School Board and Board Chair of El Programa Hispano. Her passion is empowering and encouraging marginalized youth to pursue a higher education, be change agents in their communities and serve as mentors to younger generations. Dr. Gómez credits her success to the mentorship of community members who believed in her and the endless support and encouragement from her family. Now she strives to do the same for her students.

Cindy Lindsley grew up and graduated from the neighboring city of Canby. During her youth, she competed against West Linn-Wilsonville athletic teams. She also worked at the Wilsonville movie theater. Cindy was also raised with a strong growth mindset from her parents, who worked within the West Linn-Wilsonville School District. Perhaps safe to say, Cindy was an honoree WLWV district community member from a young age. Upon graduating from the University of Oregon in 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and business, she dove into the events industry as a caterer, florist, designer, and finally launched her own wedding coordination business in 2015. Alongside her venture as a small business owner, Cindy served as the director of special events at the Hillsboro Chamber and found great joy in connecting with community members. During her time with the chamber, the largest event, the Hillsboro Latino Cultural Celebration, attracted over 10,000 people.

Fast forward a couple years and Cindy entered the West Linn-Wilsonville School District family as the Community Services Manager. In this role, she helps to monitor the district’s safety and security plans, school boundaries, facility use/coordination, and community activities integrated into the district. In 2020 when the pandemic hit, Cindy’s department pivoted and accepted oversight of the district’s newly launched Family Empowerment Center. Cindy believes that the schools are the hearts of the community, and that while the pandemic has hit hard, in ways it’s also made us stronger than ever before. ‘In the rush to return back to normal, use this time to consider which parts of normal are worth returning back to’ (by unknown).

Maria de Lourdes Horton is the bilingual family engagement specialist at the Family Empowerment Center. She holds an architectural degree from the School of Architecture at the University Autonomous of Yucatan in Mexico. She also has an asssociate’s degree in teaching English as a communication tool. In Mexico she worked for an architectural firm as well as an English teacher for the high school section of the school she attended since kindergarten. She came to Oregon 21 years ago when she got married, and is now a U.S. citizen. She and her husband lead a family of nine: two adults, two teen boys, two dogs, two birds and one cat.

 

Maria has worked for the district for 18 years. She started working in the fall of 2002 as the secretary/registrar at Boones Ferry Primary School in Wilsonville. After 10 years she became head secretary at Lowrie Primary School, when it opened its doors in the fall of 2012, where she remained until the fall of 2018. She then got a position at the school district office as an administrative assistant for the human resources department. In the spring of 2020, as the pandemic crisis arose, her work changed direction. She began connecting families in the community to the resources they needed for the switch to online learning. That summer, she accepted the position of bilingual family engagement specialist, and since last October, she has been working at the newly formed West Linn-Wilsonville Family Empowerment Center.

 

Maria enjoys art and watching movies and documentaries. She loves the Pacific Northwest, as her maternal line passed through this area a few thousand years ago.