Jacqueline Turner, as the Senior Director of Community Engagement and Communications, oversees Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA)’s external relations, public affairs, community engagement, and volunteerism, telling our story and successes to key stakeholders to increase engagement. Jacqueline bolsters HOLA’s strategic goals and special projects through the enhancement of existing partnerships and establishment of new relationships with community leaders, nonprofit organizations, advocacy coalitions, and other entities and individuals. She also serves as HOLA’s representative in community meetings to facilitate HOLA’s continued listening and learning from our constituents and oversees communications and the creation of public education content aimed at presenting afterschool and summer youth programming as a solution to the opportunity gap.

In Jaqueline’s previous role at HOLA as the College & Career Success Director, Jacqueline oversaw the L.E.A.L (Learn. Empower. Aspire. Lead) and College Access program. She led her team to ensure that juniors/seniors and their families received the most accurate and up to date information in order to make the best decisions during the college application process. Some of Jacqueline’s accomplishments included leading her team to expand the Persistence Scholarship program by 200%, which serves a population of students who are not following the standard four year educational trajectory.. Jacqueline piloted a successful out of state internship program, where a partnering organization pipelined HOLA scholar alumni through their internships program, ultimately employing the alumni upon college graduation. Jacqueline’s dedication and passion for creating jobs for Heart of LA’s scholars led her team to execute HOLA’s first career/job fair for over 150 scholars. Organizations across California attended the event in hopes of hiring the most talented and diverse group of students.

Jacqueline joined HOLA in 2020 after dedicating 12 years in the field of closing the college matriculation gaps in underrepresented communities and focusing her time in creating workforce training for youth to be prepared to land jobs after college.Jacqueline received her Bachelors of Arts in Psychology at the University of California Santa Cruz. She spent an extensive amount of time studying linguistics with an emphasis in Spanish at La Universidad De Cordoba and completed her field study under the supervision of Tony Hoffman, Ph.D through the A.N.E.C.A (Ayudando Ninos en Centro America) program in Costa Rica.