William Perez
Position: Board Member
William Perez (pronouns), an immigrant from El Salvador and first-generation college graduate, is a professor and Chair of the Educational Leadership Department in the School of Education at Loyola Marymount University (LMU). His research focuses on the educational access of multilingual immigrant, undocumented, indigenous, and deported students in the U.S. and Mexico. He has received the Mildred Garcia Prize for Excellence in Research from the Association for the Study of Higher Education for his book, We ARE Americans: Undocumented Students Pursuing the American Dream. His follow-up book, Americans by Heart: Undocumented Latino Students and the Promise of Higher Education received the Critics’ Choice Book Award from the American Educational Studies Association. He has been featured, interviewed, or quoted in over 100 press/media stories in outlets such as PBS Newshour, NBC Nightly News, NPR’s All Things Considered, The Guardian, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Diversity in Higher Education, the Atlantic, Time, and Hispanic Magazine. He has also received various awards for his community-engaged research on immigration, education, and equity, including the Early Career Scholar award from the Hispanic Research Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association, the Fulbright Fellowship, and most recently, the 2023 LMU Award for Excellence in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. He has delivered over 190 invited and peer-reviewed conference presentations in the U.S. and abroad. His impact on the field has been recognized by Education Week’s annual ranking of the top university-based scholars in the U.S. who are doing the most to influence educational policy and practice. He received his B.A. from Pomona College and his Ph.D. from Stanford University, where he was also awarded the Distinguished Scholar Alumni Award. His newly released book is titled Culturally Responsive Schooling for Indigenous Mexican Students (Multilingual Matters, 2024).
