Vincent Perez, MPA

Personal Bio

I am Vincent Perez, MPA. I am the son of Yolanda Ramirez and Rudy Perez, a grateful brother, and a loving father. My life has been shaped by family, culture, learning, grief, love, and service. I am a Gen X Chicano born in California, raised in Washington State, educated in Idaho and Wyoming, and formed through years of serving students, families, leaders, and communities in Louisiana, Texas, and Washington. I’m also grateful for stints in Chicago, Germany, and the Netherlands.

At the heart of my work is a simple belief: lasting transformation happens when we cultivate the conditions that expand human capacity. I am especially moved by moments when young people discover their voice, affirm their worth, and begin to imagine a life larger than the one they were handed. Over the past twenty-five years, I have worked as an educator, facilitator, coach, consultant, program designer, and organizational leader. Across all of these roles, my vocation has remained the same: to create meaningful learning experiences that honor dignity, identity, belonging, and the human possibility within every person.

My work lives at the intersection of education, leadership, healing, organizational development, and community. I value humanizing and historicizing practices in the pursuit of liberation, repair, and flourishing. This has led me to focus on cross-racial solidarity, intersectional justice, Indigenous knowledge systems, carceral studies, healing-centered masculinity, emancipatory education, ethnic studies, and trauma-informed systems. My practice is rooted in experiential education, culturally responsive pedagogy, family engagement, juvenile justice reform, near-peer mentorship, Latine/x bilingual leadership, men’s healing work, and the belief that learning is one of the most sacred forces available to us.

I earned an AAS in Photographic Communications from Northwest College, a bachelor’s degree from the University of Idaho, and a Master of Public Administration from The Evergreen State College. My early training in photography still shapes how I work. I pay attention to light, context, framing, and what is often unseen. As a facilitator, coach, and organizational consultant, I try to notice the full picture: the personal, relational, organizational, historical, cultural, and embodied conditions that shape what people are able to become.

As co-founder and a leader of the Equity Institute, I have served with a national collective of consultants supporting schools, public agencies, nonprofits, and communities to grow racial literacy, emotional intelligence, dignity-centered leadership, and humanizing practice. Over the past several years, I developed the Dignity Compass as a practical tool for organizations to map their equity and dignity journey. The Dignity Compass helps teams assess their current reality, examine the relationship between policy, action, and impact, and identify pathways forward based on needs, goals, readiness, and capacity. It can be used as an introductory dialogue tool or as a multi-year implementation process for organizational change.

The Equity Institute also sponsored Tu Hogar WA, a program serving Spanish-speaking families through education, health, housing, and community support. Through Tu Hogar, we supported rental and utility assistance, outreach for Washington State’s Working Families Tax Credit, vaccine clinics, blood drives, children’s book distribution, health fairs, and other forms of community care. That work deepened my understanding that dignity is not an abstract idea. It lives in access, language, housing, food, health, trust, and the everyday conditions that allow families to breathe.

Much of my professional life began in experiential education. From 2001 to 2006, I managed the Cispus Challenge Course in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. That role taught me a great deal about human behavior, group dynamics, fear, courage, trust, and embodied learning. In 2004, I founded La Cima, a bilingual leadership camp for Latine/x youth. That work later expanded into ¡La Chispa!, a middle school leadership program. La Cima and ¡La Chispa! were created to honor students’ language, culture, identity, leadership, and sense of possibility. When my family moved to Shreveport, Louisiana in 2007, I carried La Cima with me to the Ark-La-Tex.

In Louisiana, I served as Vice President and then President of LULAC Chapter 16001 while working in the Caddo Parish juvenile court system through Volunteers for Youth Justice. There, I coordinated GEMS & GENTS mentoring and diversion programs for young people and families involved in the juvenile justice system. It was a gift to serve families through healing-centered conversations, mentorship, and learning experiences that strengthened family connection and youth possibility. I later served as Education Coordinator for the Alliance for Education before returning to Washington State.

From 2012 to 2017, I served as the Latinx Outreach Coordinator for the Association of Washington School Principals’ student leadership program, the Association of Washington Student Leaders. I also served on AWSP’s Diversity and Equity Committee and co-chaired Washington State’s 2018 Teaching Equity Conference. Over the years, I have served as an MC, keynote speaker, trainer, advisor, and facilitator for numerous educational and community events, including the Latino/a Educational Achievement Project Conference and Legislative Day, Central Washington University’s Encanto Gala, and Washington State University’s CASHE Conference.

During this period, I also helped co-found and develop curriculum for the Dare to Dream Academies, a partnership with OSPI Migrant Education and CAMP programs at Central Washington University, Eastern Washington University, Washington State University, Western Washington University, and the University of Washington. Dare to Dream brought migrant high school students into university settings for credit-bearing, week-long experiences rooted in leadership, identity, access, and possibility. These programs reinforced one of my deepest beliefs: students do not simply need information about opportunity. They need experiences that help them feel worthy of it.

In 2014, I founded Rethink Manhood as a space to work with men and boys to confront the violence of patriarchy and imagine more healing-centered ways of being men. That same year, I began serving as the Latino culture group leader for Grupo Ollin at Green Hill School, Washington’s state juvenile rehabilitation facility. Grupo Ollin has become one of the most meaningful sacred learning communities of my life. Through circle, ceremony, writing, Indigenous knowledge, critical reflection, food, story, accountability, and brotherhood, we explore identity, healing, masculinity, culture, violence, responsibility, and possibility.

My men’s work has continued to deepen through the Men’s Healing Network, a growing community and platform dedicated to helping men slow down, tell the truth, build emotional capacity, and reconnect with themselves and one another. MHN exists because many men are carrying grief, shame, anger, loneliness, pressure, and inherited patterns without enough spaces to be witnessed, challenged, and supported. Through circles, facilitator training, podcast conversations, community learning, and practical tools, MHN creates spaces where men can practice emotional honesty, accountability, self-compassion, and relational repair.

Somatic practice has also become an important part of my understanding of men’s healing. I have come to believe that men cannot think their way into wholeness alone. We also have to learn how to listen to the body, notice sensation, breathe through discomfort, move energy, and develop the capacity to stay present when old patterns arise. Practices rooted in meditation, movement, breath, awareness, and embodied reflection have helped me understand that wisdom is not only found in our thoughts. It also lives in the body. This has influenced how I think about leadership, masculinity, healing, and the inner work required to meet life with greater steadiness and care.

The young men of Grupo Ollin helped lead me to the Xicanx Institute for Teaching and Organizing. XITO changed my life and my career. Since 2016, I have helped organize annual winter institutes in Washington to deepen conversations about ethnic studies, culturally sustaining pedagogy, Indigenous knowledge, and educational justice. I also served as a consultant with Continua Consulting Group, supporting trauma-informed multi-tiered systems of support, and as a trainer with CharacterStrong, supporting social-emotional learning and character education.

Today, my work continues through several connected pathways. Through Lead Within, I coach principals, district leaders, executives, and mission-driven teams who are carrying high levels of responsibility in complex times. Lead Within blends coaching, Positive Intelligence, reflective practice, somatic awareness, and decades of facilitation experience to help leaders strengthen the inner, relational, and leadership capacity needed to meet life’s hardest moments with clarity, steadiness, and humanity.

Across all of my work, I am trying to answer a few enduring questions. What conditions help people heal, learn, lead, and flourish? What capacity is needed to respond well to this moment? How do we build organizations and communities where people experience dignity, belonging, accountability, and care? And how do we become the kind of ancestors our children deserve?

I am blessed to serve organizations and communities working to honor access, agency, belonging, connection, dignity, equity, healing, inclusion, joy, justice, liberation, sovereignty, and love. My work is not only professional. It is personal, cultural, spiritual, and vocational. It is my way of giving thanks for the people who shaped me, the teachers who guided me, the young people who trusted me, and the communities that continue to teach me what it means to become more fully human.