Grad Slam 2026 Judges

Dr. Susie López-Guerra stands at the intersection of courage and coherence in public education. With more than 25 years of experience, she has built her career on a bold premise: systems change when people understand them—and when they do, they can transform them. A first-generation, bilingual, bicultural leader born and raised in Santa Ana, California, she carries both lived experience and professional expertise into every space she leads.

As California State Director for the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), she works alongside superintendents, cabinet members, principals, and teacher leaders to redesign education systems from the inside out. Drawing on research from the world’s highest-performing and most equitable systems, she helps districts move beyond isolated initiatives toward aligned, future-ready strategy. Across more than 15 California districts, she has strengthened leadership capacity, elevated instructional quality, and advanced organizational coherence—ensuring that reform is not rhetorical, but operational.

Her scholarship and leadership center on early literacy and family and community engagement—not as peripheral strategies, but as foundational pillars of equity. In Santa Ana Unified School District, where she served as a senior cabinet member, she designed and institutionalized a comprehensive Family and Community Engagement framework serving over 42,000 students. She led the expansion from 10 parent centers to 57 wellness centers in one academic year, authored the district’s Board-adopted Graduate Profile, launched a Student Board Member initiative to institutionalize youth voice, and coordinated more than 50,000 vaccinations for families during the COVID-19 pandemic. As District Crisis Commander and chief spokesperson, she led with clarity and steadiness in moments that demanded both.

A former Teacher of the Year and bilingual master teacher, Dr. López-Guerra began in the classroom, where she learned that lasting change is relational before it is structural. Today, she is a nationally sought-after keynote speaker and master facilitator known for making complex research accessible and actionable. Her guiding mantra—“making privileged knowledge common knowledge”—is more than a phrase; it is a leadership stance rooted in transparency, shared power, and collective capacity.

She holds a Doctor of Education from the University of Southern California, a Master of Science in Education with an Administrative Credential, and a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature with a minor in Spanish. Her work continues to challenge education systems to be more coherent, more humane, and more worthy of the children they serve.