She never felt she fit in. Lisa Cuestas of Casa Familiar remembers being a Latina in a majority white high school in her hometown of Tucson, Arizona. Ironically, it was a community service requirement to graduate that inspired her to find the place where she did fit in.

Cuestas volunteered for Casa De los Ninos, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting children and families in the Tucson area. That experience inspired her, at the age of 19, to move to San Diego where she worked at Willow Elementary School in San Ysidro as part of the after school program team.

One year later, Cuestas attended the annual Thanksgiving Dinner organized by Casa Familiar. The care, love, and dedication of Casa’s staff, local teachers, community members, and police serving the people in need of the South Bay region made a lasting impression on her. Cuestas decided to volunteer at Casa Familiar and met Andrea Skorepa, the CEO of Casa Familiar at that time.

Skorepa offered Cuestas a formal position working in Casa’s Teen Center. Cuestas’ dedication, service, and commitment was noticed by Casa Familiar’s management, and, after 10 years, Cuestas became Casa Familiar’s Operations Director. Soon afterward, she married and then earned a bachelor’s degree in human services and management from University of Phoenix.

Today, Cuestas is the CEO of Casa Familiar, which serves 10,000 low-income residents, students, youth, families, and seniors through 1,100 units of affordable housing, social services, education, and arts and culture programming. Cuestas succeeded Skorepa, her mentor, after her retirement last year.

“Andrea saw something in me. I never imagined that I could be a leader myself,” said Cuestas. “I have a family who loves me and inspires me to be a hard worker, but you also need strong people like Andrea who believed in me and impacted my life.”

“One of my biggest challenges is to put my ten years of community organizing skills into practice in the best way that makes a difference,” said Cuestas. “The new Presidential Administration and the political environment brought back what I often saw in high school – racism, discrimination, and assumptions of what my life should and shouldn’t be. I think we know how we can best make a difference in San Ysidro. We all have a lot of work to do.”

Cuestas is passionate about youth. She wants to open doors of opportunity to teenagers. One of the projects that Cuestas wants to launch is El K-Fe. Through the El K-Fe project, youth aged 14 to 24 would be provided with employment, job training, skills development, and educational opportunities as baristas. This program aims to empower San Ysidro’s youth to be engaged in career planning and preparation, local economic revitalization, and entrepreneurship. Cuestas’ next step is to set up a coffee cart for students to open and run their first artisan café.

El K-Fe is only the latest in Casa Familiar’s programs to support and empower youth.

At The Front Gallery, local students train in organizing the Gallery’s concerts and meetings. Through partnerships with the San Ysidro Vanguard Education Foundation, the National Council of La Raza, San Diego Gas and Electric, Cox Communications, and the Girl Scouts, Casa Familiar offers the youth of San Ysidro a robotics program, an innovation lab, and the Science of Sport program. STEAM – science, technology, engineering, arts, and math – is a central focus of Casa’s afterschool programs. In addition, Wells Fargo Bank, the City of San Diego, and Casa Familiar are building the new “Los Ninos” playground in the San Ysidro Community Park.

“Now youth has a space to grow in San Ysidro,” said Cuestas. “We are creating a cultural corridor for young people to stay and hang out in San Ysidro.”

Casa has also designed a space for San Ysidro’s community to thrive. The 10-unit, Living Rooms at the Border affordable housing project is a central feature of the redevelopment of the San Ysidro Historic Neighborhood. It includes the adaptive reuse of a vacant church that captures much of the character of San Ysidro. “We are an actual present-day, living border community. We offer a cultural experience very different than Old Town,” said Cuestas. “We are transforming the San Ysidro Historic Neighborhood in a way that honors our very special location – we are San Ysidrans.”

Looking back on her high school years in Tucson, Cuestas reflects, “San Ysidro looks like where I grew up and sounds like the place where I grew up, but there isn’t community spirit like there is in San Ysidro. I’m at home in San Ysidro. Truth is everyone fits-in in San Ysidro.”