María de los Ángeles DeSantos Quezada

Southern Education Leadership Initiative Fellow

Ms. Desantos Quezada is our Southern Education Leadership Initiative Fellow. Ángeles is a Masters of Education candidate within the Policy and Planning division of the Education Leadership and Policy Program at the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin). Her passion areas rest under the lens of Critical Race Theory with a focus on immigrant students, bilingual education, civic and political development, and K-12 ethnic studies. Ángeles is a McNair Scholar and earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and minor in Applied Research Methods from San Jose State University. As a first generation immigrant, born in Aguascalientes, Mexico and raise in Jalisco Ángeles has become involved in different advocacy initiatives at the University and in the larger community to unapologetically amplify the voices of Brown and Black students. As part of the Student Advisory Committee, Co-Chair of the McNair Graduate Student Group, and member of the Ethnic Studies Network of Texas, she strives to center the voices of historically marginalize communities of color. She is the Graduate Assistant for the Transfer-Year-Experience office where she develops strategic support for students to combat the negative effects of transfer shock for academic success. Ángeles is also a Graduate Research Assistant for the Institute of Urban Policy Research & Analysis (IUPRA) where she helps with the Association of Black Psychologists COVID-19 Needs-Assessment Project. In addition, Angeles serves as a research assistant on "Considering the Immigrant Civic Potential: Latinx Immigrant-origin Youths’Civic Identity Development" (PI: Callahan, Co-PI: Obenchain). Her duties include data collection, cleaning, and analysis, as well as overall manuscript development. As part of the LatinxEd Team she is excited to support the Semillas summer program where she hopes to make meaningful connections with students and to continue learning and working to advance equity and justice in education for Latinx students in North Carolina. In her free time, she enjoys calling her family, painting, and watching Las Chivas soccer games.