Equity is at the core of leadership
Meet the Team
People. Purpose. Partnership.
The LAEP Core team is made up of educators, researchers, coaches, and advocates who bring deep expertise, lived experience, and an unwavering commitment to equity in education. Grounded in collaboration and driven by a belief that every student deserves access to high-quality, inclusive learning environments, our team works alongside schools, districts, and communities to strengthen leadership, inform policy, and advance systems change.
From coaching and professional learning to research, evaluation, and strategic partnerships, we center people—especially those most impacted by inequity—in everything we do. Together, we bring rigor, compassion, and accountability to the work of building educational systems that honor dignity, expand opportunity, and move us closer to justice.
John Reséndez (he/him)
Director of CORE
John Reséndez serves as the Director of CORE (Cultivating Organizational Resiliency and Empowerment) at the Los Angeles Education Partnership, where he leads 21CSLA’s Regional Academy serving California’s southernmost counties. Previously, he held the role of Director of Teaching and Learning, guiding instructional vision and professional growth across the organization. In each role, John has been entrusted with shaping systems that strengthen educators, center communities, and move institutions toward deeper coherence and purpose.
John brings more than twenty-five years of experience as a teacher and administrator serving communities throughout Los Angeles. His career has been defined by a steadfast commitment to ensuring that students and families have access to high quality learning experiences that honor their identities, aspirations, and full humanity. He believes education, when practiced with care, compassion, and disciplined intentionality, can serve as one of the most powerful tools for confronting the systemic inequities that have long undermined at-promise communities.
A principled and passionate advocate for educational equity and liberation, John approaches leadership with both moral clarity and deep humility. He believes that transformational change is not only possible but necessary, and that high quality education plays a vital role in the ongoing pursuit of justice, dignity, and opportunity for all.
Antonia Issa Lahera (she/her)
Program Consultant
Antonia Issa Lahera is an educator, leader, and justice-centered change agent whose career spans classrooms, campuses, and communities across the globe. She began her work teaching elementary through high school students in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, grounding her practice early in cross-cultural awareness and equity. Upon returning to California, she taught elementary school, served as a staff developer and mentor teacher, and moved into school leadership at both the middle and high school levels.
Throughout her career, Antonia has worked exclusively in underserved communities, leading and re-envisioning schools designed to disrupt inequitable outcomes—including reconstituted schools, a single-gender school, and a ninth-grade academy focused on readiness, belonging, and possibility. For over fifteen years, she partnered with the National Urban Alliance across the United States and collaborated with Dr. Janet Allen to advance adolescent literacy and culturally responsive instruction.
At the university level, Antonia led the School Leadership Program at California State University, Dominguez Hills, where she secured and managed more than $20 million in federal grants dedicated to strengthening school leadership and transforming systems from the inside out. Her work is driven by an unwavering commitment to justice, human dignity, and the belief that schools must be designed not just to educate but to liberate. Her work remains grounded in the belief that schools should not reproduce injustice, but interrupt it by design, by leadership, and with love.
Alejandra Portillo (she/her)
Senior Evaluator
Alejandra Portillo is a bicultural community-based researcher and Senior Evaluator at Los Angeles Education Partnership (LAEP). Currently, she leads the evaluation efforts for LAEP’s implementation of the 21st Century California School Leadership Academy (21CSLA). Her work has focused on making data accessible and culturally relevant for community members and nonprofit leaders, working with families, youth, and children, and evaluating a range of programs, including early childhood, place-based, community health worker, and career readiness initiatives. Her projects have included an evaluation of four Best Start communities within Los Angeles County, including data management, community capacity-building, and training on data use; a GIS mapping-based evaluation of services for A Place Called Home, a youth-serving organization in Historic South Central Los Angeles; collaborator of Culturally Responsive and Equitable Evaluation efforts at Child360, where she designed and facilitated staff trainings aimed at increasing diversity, inclusion, and equity in evaluation and research designs; and co-facilitating the strategic planning efforts of the Multilingual Support Division (MSD) in the California Department of Education.
As a former foster youth and the first in her family to achieve higher education, Ms. Portillo is passionate about social justice, equity, and system change.
Randy Garcia (he/him)
Lead Coach
Randy Garcia has served in a variety of roles, including teacher and administrator throughout his 20 years of experience in education. He currently serves as the Lead Core Coach at the Los Angeles Education Partnership, where he supports educational leaders across Southern California through thoughtful collaboration and strategic partnerships. A strong advocate for marginalized communities, Randy is deeply committed to the belief that a positive educational path—one that is both equitable and accessible for all students—is not a privilege, but a right. Outside of work, Randy enjoys spending time with his best friend (who also happens to be his wife) and traveling both domestically and abroad.
Carolene Joy Cabrera King (she/her)
Group Learning Lead
Carolene Joy Cabrera King (also known as Carolene Joy) is the Group Learning Lead and a CORE Coach at the Los Angeles Education Partnership, with nearly two decades of experience spanning kindergarten through graduate-level education. She currently teaches Equity in Project-Based Learning at the High Tech High Graduate School of Education, working with educators internationally, and facilitates community-based workshops and learning series for learners of all ages.
In addition to her education work, Carolene is a breathwork healing facilitator with Revelation Breathwork and is deeply committed to equity, decolonization, and liberation work grounded in wellbeing, healing, and wholeness.
Based in Eden Valley in Escondido, California, Carolene is a poet, playwright, educator, and activist dedicated to envisioning and building a world rooted in true social justice. A proud Pinay, her play Too Much Skin—which explores assimilation, sexism, and the dismantling of white supremacy culture through the relationship between a Filipino American brother and sister—premiered in Hollywood in 2022 to critical acclaim and was featured in Broadway World. Her poetry collection, Tend, received a warm reception across Southern California and continues to resonate with readers.
Dr. Liza Xet Smith (she/her)
Early Childhood Education Lead
Dr. Liza Xet Smith is a proud Indigenous researcher, early childhood educator, and community builder. As a joyful early education advocate with over 20 years of dedicated experience in the field, she collaborates with the Los Angeles Education Partnership as a coach and UTK Lead. By partnering with educational leaders in Southern California to deliver direct coaching, professional development, and technical assistance, she promotes equitable and just education for all. In addition, by centering community voices and belonging, Dr. Xet Smith owns Corazon Education, a research and consulting group that asks, “Best practices for whom? How do we know?” On her rest days, she enjoys camping and sitting by a fire with a good book.
Sierra Leffers (she/her)
Project Coordinator and Event Specialist
Sierra Sunset Leffers’s path began in a working‑class community shaped by educators, where she learned that inequity is reality. She pursued economics to understand the arguments often used to pit fiscal responsibility against human rights. Instead, she found the opposite: when practiced with rigor and honesty, economics demonstrates that investing in people strengthens communities. Claims that human dignity is “too costly,” she learned, reflect misuse of the field, not its truth. After spending eight years at community college, she earned a merit‑based scholarship to Columbia University which she used as bargaining ship for a full ride to UCI, she completed a degree in economics. Sierra brings this clarity to her work. Grounded in compassion and shaped by lived experience, she focuses on how data and policy can be used to expand opportunity, not restrict it. Her story reflects the values she carries into every project: equity, integrity, and a belief that systems can — and must — evolve toward justice.
Valerie Franco (she/her)
Social Media Coordinator
Valerie Franco is a full-time student at California State University, Northridge, graduating this spring with a Bachelor's degree in Marketing. She is passionate about social media and digital marketing, with a strong interest in using storytelling and online platforms to increase access, visibility, and engagement for community-focused initiatives. Alongside her academic work, Valerie is a ballet teacher who loves working with children and believes in the power of creative spaces to build confidence, belonging, and self-expression at an early age. Her professional approach is guided by empathy, creativity, and a commitment to uplifting voices through thoughtful, inclusive communication.