Born in Mexico and raised in South LA, Aurea Montes-Rodriguez developed a passion for building African American and Latino leadership, capacity, and strategies that are inclusive and effective toward community transformation.
In 1997, Montes-Rodriguez achieved her Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from UCLA, where she would return in 1999 to graduate with a Master’s in Social Welfare. Organizations such as Catalyst California, the ACLU of Southern California, and the Tides Foundation have recognized her many accomplishments. In 2022, she was awarded the Stanton Fellowship for her inquiry into gender and new community approaches to cultivating women’s leadership.
Through a lifelong impactful career, Montes-Rodriguez has successfully spearheaded many worthy efforts such as co-founding the Make LA Whole Coalition, which brings attention to the needs of children, women, and over-policed communities; and a multi-year kinship care campaign, focused on improving the lives of African American and Latino foster children
Montes-Rodriguez served as the Executive Vice President at Community Coalition, a South L.A. based organization, where she dedicated over 25 years of work. At the Community Coalition, she co-founded many sustainable community-led coalitions that focused on improving the well-being of children by addressing systemic issues of poverty, violence, and the inequity of educational opportunities She also led advocacy at the local and state levels, and she provided strategic leadership to multiple community action campaigns and initiatives. Her coalition-building and advocacy work has produced a gold standard in leadership development while emphasizing sustainability, capacity-building, and securing private and public funding for initiatives serving children, families, and communities.
Currently, she is the Vice President of Community Engagement and Policy at First 5 LA where she guides L.A. County’s largest early childhood advocacy organization, centering community voice, racial equity, and social justice. In this vital role, she will be able to grow social movements in support of our youngest children and their families, strengthen public systems, and catalyze public policy efforts at the local, state, and federal levels.
arcia
Dr Andrea Garcia has focused her work, research, and volunteer endeavors in centering the brilliance and inherent wisdom of Native people as they steward healthy futures for the next seven generations. She has given needed attention to the structural determinants of health for the American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) community through important issue areas such as homelessness, placemaking, data equity, narrative change, community defined evidence practices and policy advocacy. Garcia continues to elevate what “home” and wellness can look like in urban settings for Indigenous people, and she works to create system change.
Garcia is a citizen of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation on her maternal side, and Mexican on her paternal side. Garcia is a Physician Specialist at the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, where she spends her clinical time at the American Indian Counseling Center. Garcia is a Mayoral appointee for the Los Angeles City/County Native American Indian Commission, where she served as chair of the subcommittee on homelessness and of the ad hoc committee on community COVID response She also has the privilege of serving as Board President for We Are Healers, and recently joined the Social Justice Partners LA Board where she was an inaugural racial equity in homelessness fellow. Garcia is one of the founding members of the AIAN Housing Collaborative, a group of AIAN community-based organizations and tribes whose intent is to build community and organizational capacity to better serve unhoused relatives. Her most recent tenure as a 2023-2024 Durfee Stanton Fellow and as a 2024 Skoll Fellow has allowed her to braid these experiences into a larger global understanding of Indigenous healing through placemaking and power building
Garcia completed a fellowship in research and policy with the National Clinician Scholars Program at UCLA and trained in General and Preventive Medicine with the California Department of Public Health. She earned her MD and MS from the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program.
Garcia firmly believes that Indigenous health flourishes where ancestral love is nourished, and it is her mission to create culturally responsive and safe spaces that promote healing, community, and an opportunity to thrive.
ExcellenceinEducation
LauraAbrams PhD,MSW
Dr. Laura Abrams is a Professor of Social Welfare at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Abrams is an esteemed professor whose scholarship has focused on improving the wellbeing of youth and adults who have experienced incarceration and reentry to community. Her ethnographic studies have examined youths’ experiences of criminality, risk, and institutions seeking to reshape their identities She has contributed to state and local policy reforms in the juvenile justice system, reentry into the community, and diversion.
Abrams is currently involved in several studies concerning the youth and adult criminal legal systems and reentry, locally and globally. Her study of youth justice models in four countries examined how issues of age, maturity, and culpability are constructed in law and practice Her mixed methods study of very young offenders, incarceration, health, and public policy led to a state bill in California that importantly barred juvenile justice jurisdiction for youth under age 12; a model that is spreading nationally. Abrams is currently fielding a study on reentry, health, and social networks among young people aged 18-25 from Los Angeles County jails. Along with principal investigator Dr. Elizabeth Barnert, Abrams is the co-director of the UCLA Life Course Intervention Research Network – Youth Justice Node She is also working with a national team to examine “juvenile life without parole” in the United States.
In the community, Abrams has served as an expert witness for death row appeals, and particularly in cases involving minors fighting their fitness to be tried as adults. She has provided public and congressional testimony regarding treatment in the juvenile justice system, the reentry needs of youth, and effective practices for the reintegration of reentry youth into the community.
Abrams’ work and opinions have been cited in a range of prominent news media including the Washington Post, the New York Times, and NPR, among others. She has received numerous awards for her scholarship, including the SSWR Best Scholarly Book Award (2020) and the Frank R. Bruel prize for the best published article in Social Service Review (2013). In 2020, Abrams was inducted as a member of the American Academy for Social Work and Social Welfare. In 2022, she received the inaugural UCLA Public Impact award, and was inducted into the UCLA Faculty Mentoring Honor Society.
Madeleine Stoner & Ralph Fertig Student Scholar Awards
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Congratulations to an extraordinary leader, Aurea Montes-Rodriguez!
This recognition is well deserved as you have always led with deep compassion, vision and courage.
From Maria Brenes & Family
Celebrating Excellence in Social Welfare Preservation
First 5 LA commends the California Social Welfare Archives and USC for preserving the history and advancing the future of social services. Congratulations to the 2025 honorees, including our Vice President of Community Engagement & Policy, Aurea Montes-Rodriguez, recipient of the George D. Nickel Award.
Together, we build a brighter future for Los Angeles County’s children and families.
