I’m Lisa Flores. I’m a first generation college graduate, a graduate of Denver Public Schools, and I’m running for School Board.
Who am I? As a girl, I was the tall, skinny one with scabby knees, who was forever enrolling in another new school. My grandparents were migrant farmworkers who worked the fields of California with their children. As a young single parent, my mother became a hairdresser, a profession that bought groceries and sent me to college. She was a social justice activist in her off hours, and she raised me to fight for my community. I started at Denver East High School when we moved to Denver in 1984.. When I was placed in the X/AP track with college bound peers and great teachers, all of a sudden, it wasn’t just my mother who was encouraging me to go to college. When I graduated from high school, I was one of two students who received a $400 scholarship from the teachers of Denver East High. Their faith in me propelled me farther than they will ever know. With scholarships, financial aid, and the $100 my mom sent me each month, I paid for school and graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz.
After college, I moved home to Denver and started working at Mi Casa Resource Center for Women. I worked with students from La Academia, West and Lincoln High Schools, and then served for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer. When I came home, I served for five years as the executive director of Denver Inner City Parish. In both jobs, I learned to work hard to elevate and strengthen existing community resources. At DICP, I learned how to make payroll, love and lead a staff, and guide the vision and mission of a grassroots organization that continues to hold a big piece of my heart.
In 2003, ready for the next challenge, I served as senior staff for then newly-elected Mayor John Hickenlooper. After I left the city, I continued to support community programs in my work with the Gates Family Foundation, a small, locally-based family foundation (commonly mistaken for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). For the past four years, my work at Gates has been dedicated to closing the achievement gap for children from low-income families.
I have also served on the boards of the Children’s Museum, Denver’s Welfare Reform Board, Denver Housing Authority, and currently I serve as a Denver Public Library commissioner.
I have great friends and deep roots in Denver. My husband, Rick Tallman is a Gulf War era veteran, who gardens and works in renewable energy. Together, we are helping to raise our nephew, a future paleontologist and rock star, who will soon be a second grader at Brown Elementary.
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