Marisol Garcia did not set out to be an educator, but an organizer. After working in the political world, she found her way to the classroom and then to the head of the state’s teacher’s union. There she discovered her past experience helped her and her union use collective action to move forward and meet the challenges of educators in Arizona.

Responses have been edited slightly for clarity.

What was your path to education? And to your current leadership role?

My mom is a first grade teacher, she was for 40 years and my dad is in higher education. He was a professor and a dean, and a lot of his work was done in cognitive science and bilingual education. And my mom was a bilingual educator — I had no interest in getting involved in education.

I was fairly politically active in high sch

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