Teresa Alonso Leon, founder and president of Parakata Consulting LLC and a former member of the Oregon House of Representatives, spoke at a City of Wilsonville Equity & Inclusion Committee speaker series event about her immigrant childhood and her work on language access and higher-education equity.

Alonso Leon said her legislative priorities focused on making the Oregon State Capitol more accessible to non-English speakers and on policies to improve college completion rates for students of color. “We made the Capitol building a language access building,” she said, describing work to secure funding and on-site interpreters to support testimony in multiple languages.

Alonso Leon opened by describing her childhood in Michoacán and the migration that brought her to Oregon at age 4. She told the audience she was separated from her mother briefly at the border, recalled living in substandard housing while her parents worked as farm laborers, and described educators who encouraged her to pursue college. “Teachers in my life were amazing. They saw something in me. They encouraged me,” she said.

She reviewed her path into public office, saying she served three terms representing the 22nd District from 2017 to 2023 and became what she described as the first indigenous immigrant Latina elected to the Oregon legislature. As a legislator she chaired the House Education Committee and said she pushed for the collection and use of disaggregated data on how state systems serve diverse populations.

Alonso Leon described a task force she led to study postsecondary student outcomes. She said the task force included eight legislators, took three attempts to pass enabling legislation and divided its work into three focus areas: financial aid, student services and accountability. “Students told us they face child-care deserts, housing and food insecurity and surprise fees,” she said, summarizing testimony heard by the group.

She said the follow-up to that work includes a statewide advocacy group and a training program that teaches students how to write and deliver testimony. Alonso Leon said those programs are currently supported by foundation grants and that she and colleagues have applied to the Lumina Foundation for a $250,000 grant to expand the work nationally.

Asked whether she misses the legislature, Alonso Leon noted the limits of the state representative salary and the financial strains of serving in office. “They make $35,000 a year,” she said. “I just couldn’t afford it.” She described continuing to lobby and organize from the private sector and training students and community members to advocate at the Capitol.

Audience members asked about the most urgent challenges facing underrepresented students and about whether she plans to run for office again. Alonso Leon said affordability and retention are central problems and urged community members to speak up for people who are vulnerable. “If you can speak up on behalf of those who can’t, protect those who can’t protect themselves,” she said.

She closed with examples of local cultural organizing, including organizing Purepecha participation in Woodburn’s Fiesta Mexicana, and invited attendees to volunteer with her organization’s work on higher-education advocacy and training.

Alonso Leon’s talk combined personal narrative with policy detail about language access at the Capitol, the design and findings of a higher-education task force, and ongoing nonprofit efforts to train student advocates and pursue foundation funding to scale those programs.