Congratulations, Leticia Alvarez: MSR Celebrates a First-Generation Graduate, Special Education Scholar and Future MSR Leader
he Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder celebrates Leticia Alvarez on earning her Bachelor of Science in Special Education with honors from Mankato University, completing a years-long journey as a first-generation college student and mother of two who returned to school to become the change she wanted to see for Black and brown children in Minnesota's education system.
Leticia Alvarez didn’t take a straight road to her degree. She took the one that made sense for her life, and she arrived with honors.
A first-generation college student, Alvarez began at Normandale Community College in 2009, navigating course requirements without a roadmap and without family who had done it before her. When she became a mother at 21, school paused. Life didn’t.
Over the years, she worked in schools, listened to mentors describe what the education system was doing to Black and brown boys in Minnesota, and raised two Black and Mexican sons of her own. What she heard in classrooms and what she feared for her children merged into a single question: what could she do to change it? The answer pointed her back to school.
“I wanted this for my kids, but in order to want this for them, I had to do it first,” Alvarez said. “I can’t tell them to do something I haven’t done.”
She earned her Bachelor of Science in Special Education with a focus on academic behavior strategy, while working, parenting and pouring into others. Her self-care toolkit included deep breaths, a wide circle of family and colleagues, boundaries she wasn’t afraid to enforce and yes, the GoldRoom.
Alvarez is the daughter of MSR CEO and Publisher Tracey Williams-Dillard. In roughly a decade, she plans to carry the Spokesman-Recorder’s 91-year legacy forward as the next generation of leadership.
“When it’s my turn to take on the paper, I’m going to do it with honor,” she said. “When you want something, you go for it… I wanted a degree, I wanted to say I was a college graduate, and I did that. With honors.”
More than a diploma, Alvarez says she found herself in this process. “I actually met Leticia,” she said. “I’ve been rebranding who I am, what I am, and what my purpose is here on earth. That’s been the most liberating thing.”