Rosalia Salinas

Growing up in South Texas in a bilingual, biliterate and bicultural community, Rosalia Salinas’s vision of a world where people everywhere could practice their language, celebrate their culture, and still achieve academic success was born.

In 1998, when Proposition 227 threatened to end bilingual education, she led the statewide effort to oppose its passage, representing a coalition of concerned parents, organizations, and school districts throughout California.

In 2016, Rosalia became an outspoken advocate for the passage of Proposition 58, which established bilingual and bicultural education as a permanent part of the educational system. Even after her retirement from a life of civil service, she remains active as a volunteer and advisor to San Diego schools where her career began.

Josephine Talamantez

Josephine "Josie" Talamantez is a historian and activist who became dedicated to defending the Logan Heights neighborhood, now known as Barrio Logan, where she was born and raised.

Talamantez was a co-founder of Chicano Park and a co-founder of the Chicano Park Steering Committee on April 22, 1970. Over the next 20 years, and with Talamantez’s activism, many pieces of artwork were added, including more than 70 murals by Chicano artists from across California, making the Park the largest collection of murals in the United States.

Talamantez moved to Sacramento where she served from 1987 to 2011 as Chief of Programs for the California Arts Council, a state funding agency. But, throughout her professional career, she maintained duo-residency in San Diego where she also served for a period as executive director of the Centro Cultural de la Raza in Balboa Park.

Dr. Francine Foster Williams, PhD 

Throughout Dr. Williams' more than 40 years as an educator and administrator for the San Diego Unified School District, she coached teachers on how to instruct diverse children through a lens of race, human relations, and equity. She believed that young people should be encouraged to read and write stories about their own families and culture as a bridge to literacy and learning about the lives and cultures of others. She was particularly concerned with the status of girls and that expectations for their academic achievement would always remain high.

During the 1990s and over the span of ten years, she raised nearly $4 million in funding that benefitted San Diego schools and the children they served.

Tamila Ipema

Born in Tehran, Iran in 1956, Judge Tamila Ebrahimi Ipema left Iran in 1978 to escape the country’s political turmoil. In the United States, she has committed her life to the advancement of democracy, human rights, and social justice.

She fought for the rights of asylum seekers and refugees through her work as a defense attorney, and through her work with the US Department of Justice, before becoming a Supervising research attorney for the Los Angeles Superior Court, and Court Commissioner in Los Angeles and San Diego counties.  She was appointed to the position of Judge of San Diego County Superior Court in 2009.   In 2018-2019, Judge Ipema served as the President of National Association of Women Judges.  Judge Tamila E. Ipema is the first Iranian-American Judge to be appointed to the position of Judge of the California Superior Court in San Diego.

Marie M. Herney

Marie M. Herney (1908-1984) was known internationally as a legal authority and advocate for women’s rights. Admitted to the bar in 1931, she became San Diego County’s first woman deputy district attorney in 1932. She was San Diego’s first woman to practice in Federal Court and the first local woman to practice in the Supreme Court.

Her aim was to educate the legal profession and beyond about property laws and lack of professional opportunities affecting women—including equal pay for equal work--long before the women’s movement had taken up these issues. She was a mentor to Madge Bradley, who in 1952 became San Diego’s first woman judge.