Laureina (who also goes by Beina) joyfully joins the Girls Leadership team as the Family Program Director. She is a Bay Area native with over ten years of experience working as a classroom teacher and teacher development coach.
She began her teaching career in the rural South (Arkansas) where she gained invaluable insight and a multifaceted lens through which to view America’s education system – with particular attention to the nation’s most under-resourced regions. While there, she spent several years sharpening her educator craft by teaching middle school English and high school Humanities before transitioning to a role coaching novice teachers across the state. Most recently, Laureina returned to her East Bay roots where she taught 4th grade at an elementary school in West Oakland, CA.
Storytelling has a transformative power that is vitally important to Laureina. Simply put, she believes we become the stories we tell ourselves. This encourages her to approach her Girls Leadership role with a growth mindset, dedication, a heightened affinity for working alongside our most marginalized youth of color, and a keen eye for noticing who has “the mic” / how they are using it.
Laureina earned a bachelor’s degree in Development Studies, with a minor in Education from UC Berkeley and a master’s degree in Educational Leadership from the University of Arkansas. She holds a K-12 Building Level Administrator License in both Arkansas and California.
