Success — Lives Transformed

Josie Mendez-Negrete

In the early seventies, Josie Mendez-Negrete was a single parent on welfare with little hope of a prosperous future. She sought out CET for job training, and after successfully completing the training program, Ms. Mendez-Negrete was placed in a job at the Community Services Organization in San Jose, CA. There, she was a productive employee for a number of years, after which, she returned to school to successfully earn her Bachelors Degree in Social Work from San Jose State. In the 1980's she was hired by the Center for Employment Training to oversee the Rockefeller Project, which served minority, female single parents. Again, not satisfied with her current academic accomplishments, Josie enrolled in the University of California, Santa Cruz to complete both her MA and Ph.D., in Sociology, in 1995; her dissertation: "No Es lo que haces!": A Sociohistorical Analysis of Relational Leadership in a Chicana/Latino Community.

Now a prominent professor in San Antonio, Texas, teaching Bilingual Bicultural Studies, Dr. Mendez-Negrete has recently written an impressive book, titled "Las Hijas De Juan" (The Daughters of Juan).

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