Los Angeles school readiness expert to serve a three-year term
Parents as Teachers (PAT) announced today the appointment of a Los Angeles native Yolie Flores to its Board of Directors. She will complete an unexpired term that ends June of 2021 and begin her first full three-year term in July 2021.
“We are thrilled to welcome Yolie to our Board of Directors,” said PAT President and Chief Executive Officer Constance Gully. “Her vast experience in early childhood, school readiness, parent support, and community engagement will complement our boards’ skills and experiences. We are confident that she will provide valuable perspectives to our operations.”
Flores is the chief learning officer for the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, (CGLR), a collaborative effort of foundations, nonprofit partners, states, and communities across the nation that works to ensure that more children from low-income families achieve early school success. She is a member of CGLR’s senior leadership team, and leads the work on School Readiness, and manages its Successful Parents Initiatives.
“I am honored to be selected to serve on Parents as Teachers board and to lend my voice to such a dynamic group of highly-regarded community leaders,” Flores said. “I hope to help them build on the wonderful job they have been doing enriching the lives of families with small children, most especially economically-challenged families from diverse communities across the nation.”
Throughout her 25-year professional career, Flores has held several leadership roles in the nonprofit, local government, and philanthropic sectors in work/family programming, community and parent engagement, parent leadership, early childhood, and K-12 education.
She served as vice president of the Board of Education at the Los Angeles Unified School District, where she ushered groundbreaking reform policies, including Parents as Equal Partners in the Education of Their Children, Public School Choice, and Quality Leadership and Teaching.
She is the former chief executive officer at the L.A. County Children’s Planning Council, the nation’s largest children’s partnership network dedicated to improving the lives of children across five outcomes of child well-being through systems change and community engagement; was a senior program manager at the National Economic Development and Law Center in Oakland, CA; and director of Child Care Policy & Planning for the City of Los Angeles.
She a member of the board of The Education Trust, Great Public Schools Now, and Parent Teacher Home Visits. She holds a master’s of Social Work degree from the University of California Los Angeles, and a bachelor’s degree in Communicative Disorders from the University of Redlands, Redlands, CA. She has twice been named social worker of the year in her region.