This teacher-turned-policy specialist is joining our team to help sustain our thriving network of Documenters across the country.
By Yasmin Zacaria Mikhaiel
Portrait taken by Grace Del Vecchio
We’re excited to welcome Kristina to the team as City Bureau’s new Director of Site Success!
Originally from Boyle Heights, Kristina’s passion for education has guided her through a career spanning teaching and leadership. After spending a decade living in Detroit–a place that shaped her love for the Midwest–she transitioned into policy and nonprofit leadership to focus on scaling equitable access to education for collective impact. Kristina is a strong proponent of democratizing information, a value that keeps her grounded in the people she serves.
We asked Kristina to share a bit about her experiences, her background, and what she’s bringing to the role. Here are some highlights from our conversation, edited for length and clarity.
What is your connection to place and where you call home?
I’m originally from Boyle Heights, a neighborhood just east of Los Angeles, and when I think about home, that's what comes to mind. My family lived on the same street for three generations It's, and I lived there for most of my life until I went to college. After graduating, I lived in Detroit for about a decade and met my husband there. I cultivated this beautiful community in education, in the nonprofit space, and throughout my neighborhoods, Southwest Detroit and West Village. Some friends and former colleagues and I even opened a cooperatively-owned and run bookstore. That bookstore, called Book Suey, still stands in Hamtramck. I just love the Midwest. I think that the Great Lakes are superior–no pun intended there–to the oceans, partly because there's no salt and no sharks.
I'm back in Southern California now, but not in Boyle Heights, so I've had to reassess what “home” is and what place means to me. I think the through line is that it just comes down to the people, the family, the relationships that you have. I count myself really lucky to have a few different geographic locations where I can feel at home through the people who are there.
You started your career as a teacher. How did you find your way to nonprofit leadership?
My family didn't have a lot of means when I was growing up, but they wanted to invest in my education. So as a family, they all supported my attendance at a private, all-girls school. That was rare for anyone else in my neighborhood, and was rare for other kids, even in my family. Because of this, I grew up seeing the differences in opportunities that access to education can create. It impacted how I thought about my future, compared to the opportunities that were presented to my cousins, my siblings, and my neighbors. It was really important for me to uncover the “why” of this discrepancy. Why is it so different? Why is the neighborhood school not seen as a viable option for improving your life, because you're not getting as high quality of an education? Why is that true in my neighborhood, and how does that vary by place? And how can I help change that? Coming out of undergrad, that curiosity led me to becoming a teacher.
I started my formal career in education as a teacher of fourth, second, and third grade. While I was teaching, I then understood that so little of the “why” is answered by what happens in the classroom. It actually comes down to the decisions that adults make about what children have access to. That realization led me to instructional coaching and I became really interested in policy, not just education policy, but healthcare policy and environmental policy, and how all these systems come together to influence outcomes for kids and their families.
After earning my policy degree, I became deeply interested in organizations and how they implement policies: what makes them work in practice? Any policy can be written and look very beautiful on paper, but it takes people to implement it and do that well. This really shifted my career toward effective organizations and leadership. I served in nonprofits in Detroit and then nationally, ultimately focusing my career on how to build strong teams, coach and develop people and work toward collective impact through collaborative action.
What drew you to building with City Bureau’s Documenters Network?
Along the way, I realized that I had a very strong passion for democratizing information. There are so many barriers–what I'll call “paywalls” outside of the internet–that keep people from accessing the information and tools they need. In my previous work, it was really important to me that those tools be accessible for free to anyone who could benefit from them. I firmly believe that communities most impacted by decisions should define the actual problems or challenges they’re facing and help to shape the solutions. They should have access to the information and tools to be able to address them. City Bureau’s framework of “inform, engage, and equip” really resonated with me. I could have applied that same concept in my classroom or even in my previous work in talent consulting. I was very intrigued and compelled by how it was being done in civic engagement spaces and journalism, in seeing it as a pipeline for communities to have access to information that will be pivotal for how they determine their futures.
One major aspect of my experiences that I’m super stoked to apply at City Bureau is team leadership, management, and engagement. I co-led my last organization for the past two years. I was there for eight years total, and I had worked my way up and left as a partner. In that role, I was running and leading the organization, thinking about both the big picture and the small details, from revenue to building strong, effective teams. In my new role, I’m looking forward to helping the Documenters Network continue meeting folks where they are and adapting to various regions and contexts, rather than delivering a one-size-fits-all solution. I'm really excited to do that work here at City Bureau.
To connect with Kristina, feel free to reach out at kristina@citybureau.org.