PHOENIX – An Arizona education advocate is using his own experience as a first-generation college student to help others gain postsecondary access.
Paul Luna, president and CEO of the Helios Education Foundation, was born and raised in the Gila County town of Miami, where he learned about the importance of education from his parents.
“What he always said to me … was that if we were able to go to college and earn a college degree, we would have options and we would have flexibility in pursuing different things that we might want to do,” Luna said of his father’s guidance.
Luna earned a civil engineering degree from Stanford University and worked in the corporate world for a few years before becoming Helios’ president in 2006.
Helios is an education advocacy group working to improve postsecondary accessibility for Arizona students.
Arizona education advocate proud of support Helios gives students
Luna said Helios has invested more than $350 million dollars in partnerships over 20 years. But the accomplishment he’s most proud of is the help and support students have received through the organization.
“We’ve been able to bring our voice,” he said. “We’ve been able to bring the unique positioning of an education foundation to advocate for students who have been traditionally underserved.”
Luna’s own experience helps him understand how to best serve students. He said sometimes first-gen students feel like they are the only ones dealing with an issue, so he urges them to seek help from support services or teachers.
“For me, a lot of it is grounded in those experiences of being a first-generation college student, understanding the unique barriers and challenges that a first-generation student might face,” he said. “Sometimes it’s the fear and it’s the unknown.”
Helios President Paul Luna relays father’s message to Arizona students
Luna said the path forward for continuing to improve accessibility starts with focusing on the importance of education, the same point his father stressed to him throughout his childhood.
The Arizona education advocate said there are achievement gaps between different sections of students right now, and his goal is to close those gaps.
“There’s a lot of ways to think about education, and there are a lot of interests in education,” he said. “And we want to make sure that the interest of student and their success remain the priority when we talk about education.”
In recognition of his work to expand educational opportunity, Education Forward Arizona will present Luna with its 2025 Luminary Award later this month.
Funding for this journalism is made possible by the Arizona Local News Foundation.
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