Laura Cuellar is the Executive Director at Kid City Hope Place. Her passion to create education opportunities for immigrants, low-income families, and first generation youth led her to become an education and children's advocate, community organizer, and coalition builder. Her expertise includes leadership development, creating sustainable partnerships, and increasing organizational capacity. 

Ms. Cuellar has experience in direct service work as well in system-level change including support systems for youth among diverse individuals, groups, and organizations. At Kid City, the advocacy and college access and college persistence programs she developed continue going strong after 15 years. As Senior Program Manager at the Mayor's Office of Education and Youth Engagement, she led a UNICEF Initiative (CFCI) that garnered Houston the recognition of the first Child Friendly City in the United States.

Laura has greatly enjoyed mentoring hundreds of youth and firmly believes supporting local leaders from diverse backgrounds and expertise leads to transformational change. When she is not working in developing future leaders, she is dancing, cooking, and spending time with her husband and their pug, Chulo.

Laura earned a Master's in Education Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Bachelor's of Arts in Sociology and Anthropology from UCLA.

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Email me at Laura@kidcityhopeplace.org