Marisa B. Pérez-Díaz

Marisa B. Pérez-Díaz, the District 3 State Board of Education member, was elected to the Board of Education in November 2012 and took office on Jan. 1, 2013. She is the youngest Latina, nationally, to have ever been elected to serve on a State Board of Education and is now serving her third term on the board having been re-elected in 2014 and 2018. Perez-Diaz served on the Committee on Instruction from January 2013 to December 2016; served as the vice chair of the Committee on School Initiatives from January 2017 to December 2020; and now serves on the Committee of the Permanent School Fund.

Pérez-Díaz holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology, with a minor in psychology, from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master’s degree in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Pérez-Díaz’s cohort’s research on the impact of a social justice-oriented principal training program called the Urban School Leaders Collaborative on the transformation of prospective K-12 administrators was presented at the University Council for Educational Administration’s 2016 Convention in Detroit, MI and the American Educational Research Association’s 2017 Annual Meeting. She is currently pursuing her doctoral degree in Educational Leadership from UTSA and is a former Graduate Fellow. Her work has been published in Dr. Aaron Griffen’s Challenges to Integrating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Programs in Organizations (2021), as well as in the Journal of Research in Rural Education.

Her training and certification in child welfare range from child development and advanced risk assessment to planning diversity initiatives and community engagement. Harnessing her expertise and skills, she went on to serve as a district-level administrator in several Texas school districts before joining the Firstmark Credit Union team as the Executive Director for the Firstmark Foundation.