Fabiola Bagula, Ph.D grew up negotiating the hyphen between Mexican-American. She was born and raised in San Diego and often found herself in Tijuana Mexico. A pocha bilingual (y que?) she received her Bachelor's degree from University of California, San Diego (UCSD), her masters and doctorate degree from the University of San Diego (USD).

As a practitioner researcher, Dr. Bagula is currently the Senior Director of the Equity department for the San Diego County Office of Education (SDCOE).

Here she leads the development and professional learning on issues of equity in education for 42 school districts. She builds the capacity of school site (K-12) leaders and district leaders across the state of California.

Her department is considered one of two geographic leads for the state of California as educational leaders of equity.

Dr. Bagula leads learning for educators and partners with stakeholders and policymakers to improve equity consciousness and cultivate inclusive learning environments for all students. She has served in public education as a teacher, teacher coach, principal, principal coach, and assistant superintendent.

In each of these roles, she has focused her attention on transforming systems into places of opportunity and high-quality learning for all students.

She often found herself leading in spaces that serve Latinx students but did not have Latina leaders as role models.

Due to the academic success of her students in a primarily Latinx dominant neighborhood, Dr. Bagula was honored as the 2013 Cesar Chavez Visionary leader and continues to be an active member of the Latinx community. She proudly became many of her students’ madrina/godmother.

Dr. Bagula also spends her time writing and researching. Her dissertation studies were about Latina leadership and identity formation. She believes that being able to tell counter stories about Latina success are important . She is a published author, and most recently contributed a chapter to the graduate textbook Latina’s Leading Schools. Her chapter, Belonging and Being Enough discusses the complexities of balancing the demands of Latina leaders in primarily white spaces. Dr. Bagula also writes to create healing space for the Latina soul conchitasconatole.com and explores the tensions of navigating two countries' expectations on Latinas.

The website holds entries that explore the tension of both honoring and rejecting certain traditions. She also contributes leadership articles to medium found here. Especially with the complexities of COVID in school systems, Dr. Bagula has self-published articles in order to help them navigate in these complex times.

Her reach and knowledge is extensive. She is a National Equity Project fellow, which developed her scholarship on issues of Equity in school systems and American society. She is currently adjunct faculty in two programs: the graduate educational leadership program for CSU San Jose and for RISE San Diego. RISE San Diego is a nonprofit organization which promotes advancement of POC in leadership positions. This successful organization now has many dynamic leaders across San Diego. She coaches Latinas leaders in both the non-profit and business arenas.