Regina is a product of Adult Education and has dedicated over 30 years to a career in education. Like many in the field, she started as a part-time teacher working and living on the Tohono O’odham Nation teaching High School English. It was then that she began teaching night time GED classes part time in a village meeting house. She moved on to teach full time in the Pima County Jail for 8 years while also teaching as adjunct faculty at the State Prison. Her work has always been grounded by “a teacher’s heart”.

She retired in December of 2019, as Vice President at a large college in Arizona and was responsible for Adult Education, transition programs, developmental education and college-wide assessment. Additional programs that Regina served, over the years included Civics & Student Leadership, AmeriCorps, Family Literacy, Distance Learning, Correctional programs, Transition Services, Refugee Education, Workplace Education, Volunteers, IBEST and EarlyIBEST programs, Math Bridge, as well as oversight of a large Testing Center which included GED testing.

She has been on the Arizona Association for Lifelong Learning Awareness Committee, chairing it during a 3 ½ year struggle to regain AE funding for the state. She also served on the National Skills Coalition Advisory Group on Skills Accessibility, the Community College Consortium for Immigrant Education (CCCIE), Blue Ribbon Panel and co-authored a chapter in a CCCIE sponsored book series on integrating immigrants from a community college perspective.

Regina earned a Master’s of Education in Leadership from Northern Arizona University with an emphasis in Community College Leadership.

Regina was honored in 2011 by the Coalition on Adult Basic Education (COABE) as Administrator of the Year, was a regional rep and the Public Policy Chair, before being asked to Chair the Student Engagement Taskforce. Now she is newly elected to the VP for Membership position starting in July of 2020.

Some things Regina is most proud of are:

• Being the daughter of an immigrant mom and blue collar union dad; she was the first in her family to finish college.
• Elevating the need for Adult Education at the local, state and national levels.
• Advocating for professionalizing Adult Education teachers and working to increase the number of full time teachers and increased benefits for part time teachers as well.
• Leading the fight for the restoration of adult ed funding in Arizona.
• Ensuring Adult Education had an internal policy after 20 years without one specifically supporting Adult Education within the college.
• Advocating for and implementing a GED Promise Scholarship which pays for one year of college for eligible GED grads, as well as building an endowment for scholarships specifically for Adult Education students at Pima Community College.
• Leading the implementation of Integrated Education and Training programs, including IBEST, EarlyIBEST and Math Bridge.
• Connecting Arizona’s award winning Ambassador Training to COABE’s vision for student engagement. It has received the National Coalition for Literacy’s leadership award.
• Creating the vision, systems and staffing to transition from WIA to WIOA.
• Serving on the board of directors for Edge Charter H.S., one of the longest running charter schools in Pima County.
• Being appointed by Congressman Raul Grijalva to former Mayor Rothchild’s Education Task Force which resulted in free GED testing in Pima County for a short time.
• Serving on the National Skills Coalition Advisory Group on Skills Accessibility.
• Being a founding college in the Community College Consortium for Immigrant Education (CCCIE), Blue Ribbon Panel.
• Co-authoring a chapter in a CCCIE sponsored book series on integrating immigrants from a community college perspective highlighting one of our volunteer programs that serve refugees and immigrants.
• Bringing ATB out of the shadows so that more Adult Education students could attend college nationally.
• Worked on an Arizona Department of Education Taskforce that created two alternative HSE options in Arizona.

Regina is married to Tracy and they have two adult daughters. She loves to volunteer for COABE and other community organizations while doing some consulting; and she tries to garden in a hot, dry desert as lots of critters try to defeat her plans.