Elena (she/her/ella) is a native of the most beautiful part of Los Angeles, Boyle Heights. Although she has lived in many cities throughout California, Boyle Heights will always be home. The advocacy needed to keep places and people from communities like Boyle Heights and South East San Diego safe and free is of utmost importance to her, it’s personal.
Seeing disparities of justice, health, wealth, and education in her community growing up, Elena decided to pursue a career in health administration. Being born and raised uninsured for most of her life, she chose the healthcare industry and challenged the narrative and statistics being one of few Chicana leaders for one of the nation's largest not-for-profit health plans, serving 12.2 million members. Elena started her work at Kaiser Permanente (KP) as an intern almost 18 years ago while she attended the University of Southern California (USC), where she received her Masters in Health Administration. Prior to her years as a Trojan, Elena obtained her Bachelor’s degree at the #1 public university, the University of California, Berkeley where she studied Chicano/a Studies, Science, and Public Policy.
Elena is now the National Director of Business Continuity Management for KP. Business continuity is mitigation, preparedness, response, recovery; availability of healthcare always. The same should be the case for justice and education.
Uprise Theatre is access to justice through education. It is mitigating unfair, biased, unconstitutional arrest, preparing yourself to preserve your safety and freedom, it is responding to threats that violate your rights, and it is recovering from the injustice of our legal system.
Elena has three little Chicano children: Santiago, Joaquin, and Jimena, whom she adores and loves more than anything in this world. She would love to see them grow up in a world where their skin color or surname is not a threat to their success or their life. She wants that for all the brown and Black children of the world. Uprise Theatre urges us to envision a better future for us all.
Besides...theatre is one step away from musicals which Elena loves.