Guadalupe Martínez Zapata

October 31, 2023

 

Guadalupe Martinez Zapata is one of six siblings and the daughter of farmworker parents with the highest aspirations and regard for education and civism. Guadalupe inherited this love and commitment to education and service and has made a life-long career of finding pathways of accessibility and equity for nontraditional student populations. Her firsthand experience with marginalization and being the parent of a biracial child have strengthened her advocacy for parents and students of color. Her greatest motivation, her son Diego, recently completed his baccalaureate degree in mathematics at Howard University.

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Guadalupe has been a college instructor at several institutions of higher education in Oregon for over 23 years. She has served as full-time faculty in the Counseling Department at Clackamas Community College since 2000, as well as teaching Chican@/Latinx studies at Portland State University. Prior to instruction, Guadalupe worked in student services administration at Oregon State University, University of Oregon and California State University, Chico.

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Guadalupe led the Oregon Leadership Institute for Latinx youth in the Clackamas Community College service district for seven years, graduating over 100 young leaders and providing peer and academic mentoring to each. She has been invited to speak and conduct trainings on issues of Latinx history, Chicana feminism, equity, and access to higher education at several local and regional conferences, including the Cesar Chavez Leadership Conference, The Student Success and Retention Conference, TedxPacificUWomen Talk, and the Women of Color Community Empowerment Conference at PCC, Rock Creek. Lupita, as her mother insisted people call her, served on the Oregon State University Alumni Association Board and the Clackamas County OSU Extension Board. She is currently a director on the board for Embold Federal Credit Union, and the Chair of the Oregon State Board of Education.

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Ms. Martinez obtained her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Oregon State University, where she was a CAMP student, and subsequently a CAMP Academic Counselor while she worked on her master’s degree.