The greatest organizer Jesús Galindo ever met wasn’t a politician, a union leader, or a CEO. It was his abuela.
Growing up in a family of modest means (his father worked as a day laborer, his mother worked at a fast food restaurant), Galindo – former teacher at WCCUSD’s Lincoln Elementary School and current CEO of Aim High – learned early that miracles weren’t pulled from thin air.
When his grandmother promised extravagant birthday parties with piñatas, cakes, and mountains of food, young Jesús would stare in disbelief. Where would the money come from?
But then he’d watch her work. “‘I’m going to show you how to do it,’” she would tell him.
She’d knock on neighbors’ doors, calling in favors. “Eduardo, you make beautiful cakes. Can you bake one this big?” “Carmen, your tamales are the best. Can you bring three dozen?” Piece by piece and time and time again, she worked her magic to assemble all the ingredients for an unforgettable party for her grandson.
Through those early lessons from his grandmother, Galindo found that the greatest things humans achieve are never done in isolation. That guiding principle became the foundation of his life, shaping each chapter of his journey.
From becoming the first in his family to attend college to helping transform Lincoln Elementary in Richmond from a school with empty classrooms into one with vibrant learning spaces where staff stayed together for their students, Galindo has lived by his grandmother’s creed: Stay focused on your vision, but you don’t have to go at it alone. Make sure to organize to get other people’s genius involved.
When Galindo arrived in Richmond as a first-year teacher and Teach for America Corps Member at Lincoln Elementary, he wasn’t planning to stay for long. “I really thought I was going to go to Lincoln, do my two years of TFA, then go into an MBA program,” he said.
At the time, teacher attrition at Lincoln left classrooms empty for months. Half the teachers left every year. Galindo remembers a young student, Davion, coming up to him on the playground that first year and telling him, “Mr. G, you know you ain’t staying next year, right? Everybody leaves.”
Galindo stayed for nine years. He fell in love with the community. He applied his grandmother’s playbook: clarity, shared ownership, and unshakable belief.
When debates over curriculum stalled progress, he rallied staff to attend the UnboundEd Standards Institute, where they learned to define rigor and align teaching to research and best practices. The result was that even yard supervisors started to spot that “just-right level where a kid can learn something new with a little help,” he said.
As a union leader with United Teachers of Richmond, he began when many of the members were disillusioned and disengaged. Under his leadership, engagement from teachers in the union went from 30% to over 90%, securing a historic raise and codifying community schools into contracts. “It wasn’t about my genius,” he said, remembering a lesson from his grandmother. It was about finding common ground and letting people’s strengths shine.
Now, as CEO of Aim High, a summer and after-school program serving 2,000 Bay Area students, he’s leaning into that philosophy. The program is celebrating its 40th summer and it specializes in what schools often lack: social-emotional learning, belonging, and project-based exploration.
He’s working with Richmond students who are mapping their path to UC Berkeley just as he once did, and Tahoe kids who are discovering their hometown lake for the first time. Galindo believes youth shine when they see the assets in their community and can use them to achieve their dreams.
“Our kids are taking everything they’re learning about connectedness and belonging back to their schools,” he said.
Galindo’s vision for Aim High relies on the multiplier effect, not just for the students who participate in the program each year but also the educators it employs. Aim High trains 300 educators each summer who take strategies like identity exploration and project-based learning back to their schools.
“We want to live in a world where that’s the standard for all schools,” he said.
The Chamberlin Education Foundation (CEF) has been a partner throughout Galindo’s journey, from funding pivotal professional development at Teach For America, Standards Institute, and New Leaders, and now exploring literacy grants to bolster staff capacity at Aim High. “They saw a teacher at Lincoln and they didn’t see a struggling school,” Galindo remembers of first engaging with the CEF. “They saw a teacher and a school and a community where there was unlimited potential.”
Now as a leader, he believes that is what students are owed: to look past struggle and invest in their brilliance.
When Galindo thinks about what has sustained him in this work, he remembers Davion, the Lincoln student who bet he’d quit like every other teacher. At his high school graduation, he walked up to Galindo and gave him a hug, stunned he’d stayed.
He thinks about the first-grader who swore he’d never read, then sobbed when he did, saying, “Now I’ll teach my sister.” Or the Aim High grad who wrote, “This was the first place I felt seen.”
“Change starts with anger at injustice,” Galindo said. “But what keeps you in the fight is hope, seeing what’s possible when people come together.” That’s another lesson from the greatest organizer he ever knew, his abuela.
