Patricia Segoviano de Pier has dedicated herself to working to improve communities for over 30 years.
As a young mother, she actively participated in the schooling of her daughters and, as a result, became active in broader issues affecting the community. At a grass roots level, she took a leadership role in empowering parents, encouraging them to proactively shape the education and environment of their children. As a volunteer, she chaired the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Bilingual Bicultural Advisory Committee, served on its Council of Councils and Chapter 1 committees, and lead community workshops. Later she was hired as a dance instructor for Camelia Avenue Elementary School and teaching assistant at Sylvan Park Elementary School. During this time, she served as a Community Representative for the Delano Impact Team (a gang intervention initiative) and also volunteered as the Van Nuys Community Liaison to the Los Angeles City Police Department, Los Angeles Recreation and Parks, and LAUSD.

 

In 1991 she began working for the City of Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Department at the Delano Recreation Center in Van Nuys where she served as a youth Dance Instructor; Director of the Preschool, After School, Winter and Summer Day Camp programs; and Coordinator of community entertainment programs. For a decade she taught young children and worked with their parents to create positive change in this community, reclaiming the neighborhood from gangs.

 

After earning her Bachelor’s Degree from California State University, Northridge in 2000, she joined the City of Los Angeles’ newly created CLASS Parks initiative and piloted a Teen Center program in Pacoima. Through this program, she created meaningful leadership opportunities and training programs for youth to establish a sense of responsibility and ownership of their community. Her program proved effective in drastically reducing serious crimes, including drug and gang related offenses.

 

In the course of her efforts in the Pacoima area, she developed working relationships with key community organizations and leveraged these to establish important community building events and programs. Among these were an annual “Hands Across Our Community” event; Pacoima’s Unity in the Community committee; and a regional Youth Conference. To help bring African American and Latino segments of the community together, she created an annual community celebration honoring the legacy of Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez that included a community clean-up, parade, sports tournaments, entertainment, and health fair. A common thread for these activities was that Patricia’s Teen Center youth were positioned at the center of the planning and execution of each.

 

As recognition for her innovative work in Pacoima, Patricia received a City of Los Angeles Neighborhood Champion Commendation from the Neighborhood Prosecutor Program of the City Attorney’s Office, Youth for Positive Change’s Quest Vanguard Award, and People for Parks Los Angeles’ Urban Hero Award.

 

In fall of 2005 Patricia transferred to work at Lemon Grove Recreation Center in Hollywood, another troubled neighborhood park with significant gang and crime problems. By involving the community in identifying and addressing issues in this area, as Director of this park she was able to once again perform her magic, transforming the park and surrounding community into a vibrant, safe haven for families and their children.

 

As if the above were not enough to keep her busy, in her “free time” Patricia completed graduate studies at  Cal State Northridge where she received a Master’s in Public Administration to help her better serve the community. She also earned a Youth and Gang Violence Interventional Specialist Certificate from California State University, Los Angeles.

 

In 2007, Patricia and her husband moved to Modesto in California’s Central Valley following his acceptance of a position there. She effectively “plugged in” to have an immediate impact on the many needs of this region. She served as an Advisory Board member of the Parents Institute for Quality Education, Commissioner on the County of Stanislaus Parks and Recreation Commission and member of the County Economic Development Action Committee representing the County’s Hispanic community. She was active in the Hispanic Leadership Council of Stanislaus County, particularly with regards to development of the Latino Emergency Communications Project. She was also active in the nationwide “Ya es Hora, Ciudadania” citizenship campaign, working with local members of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) together with Univision, Healthnet and the El Concilio in Modesto to help Latino immigrants begin the citizenship process. In addition, she helped to reenergize a local women’s group, Mujeras Latinas, to produce a sold-out “Day of the Dead” cultural event at the new Gallo Center for the Arts – now an annual event at the Center.

 

One of Patricia’s proudest accomplishments has been creation of meaningful civic engagement opportunities for youth through a set of programs that have become known as Youth Action Commissions. The first of these was the San Fernando Valley Youth Action Commission, a program based in Pacoima run under the auspices of city parks, which empowered youth to identify and take action on issues they were concerned about in their own neighborhoods. In the process, they learned about the resources available in their community, gained access to community leaders (nonprofit, business and political), and learned important skills around leadership, strategic planning, mobilization of the community, etc. Essentially, the approach used is to treat youth as a community asset – part of the solution, rather than a problem to be solved. Her Masters thesis at Cal State Northridge examined the opportunity to take this program further, to match Youth Action Commissions throughout Los Angeles City with the City’s newly established Neighborhood Councils. In Pacoima, such a collaboration resulted in Youth Action Commissioners also being elected to serve on and becoming valuable members of the local Neighborhood Council.

 

Upon moving to Modesto and hearing of issues troubling this community, in the summer of 2007 she assembled community leaders and worked with them to establish the Youth Action Commission of Stanislaus County, along the way creating a new nonprofit organization for this effort. Over 80 teens, ages 11 to 18, participated in the program in its first year, meeting weekly in the fall and spring, convening a community forum, producing a Youth Leadership Training Conference, and implementing a series of community projects to address priority issues identified by area youth. In subsequent years, the program grew, including producing of an annual “International Day of the Child” festival.

 

When her family moved to the Sacramento area in 2011, Patricia filled in for a one-year interim appointment as the Sacramento Region Associate Director for the Modesto branch of the statewide Parent Institute for Quality Education (PIQE), managing a team of 40 part-time staff speaking 16 languages to train over 700 parents of students in seventeen K-12 schools throughout the Greater Sacramento region to foster an improved educational environment for their children.

 

After completing her one season commitment to PIQE, she stepped out of the workforce to focus her energies on other worthwhile endeavors. These included community voter mobilization in the Central Valley through “Everyone Counts,” a grass-roots organization she founded in 2012; assisting with Anna Caballero’s successful election campaign for state senate; consulting for the California Endowment to provide leadership
training, community mobilization and conflict resolution in the city of Merced; serving as chair for the International Foundation of the Rotary Club of Historic Folsom; and caring for her elderly parents, both of whom have now passed on.

 

In 2022 she reentered the workforce through a position with the El Dorado Hills Community Service District at the Gilmore Senior Center in which she provided services and coordinated activities and events for seniors.

 

Later in 2022, she and her husband moved to the Central Coast. She soon become involved in the community, helping the Latino Outreach Council plan, promote and have its 30th Anniversary Celebration. She worked for Cuesta College as a Bilingual Enrollment Success Specialist, and volunteered to help Cal Poly mobilize Spanish speaking constituents throughout San Luis Obispo County to participate in Cal Poly’s Latino Outreach Voting Project.

 

Currently, she serves as a commissioner on San Luis Obispo County’s Commission on the Status of Women and Girls, and is learning more about the region through participation in the South County Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership Program. Her work in the community focuses on helping small nonprofit service organizations build capacity, mobilize, and become more sustainable through establishment of long-term relationships, partnerships and collaborations.