Lilly Cruz is a social justice educator with over 19 years of experience within various dimensions of education, in Chicago and nationally. 

Lilly’s grounding in ethnic studies and abolitionist teaching principles alongside her praxis as a middle school literacy teacher, equity-focused designer and facilitator, ethnic studies and healing justice organizer and racial equity coach, inform Zemí’s liberatory lens.

Lilly also brings her 12 years of educational leadership and systems thinking to her work through her roles as a residency site director for the Chicago Teacher Residency, school leader in Chicago Public Schools, senior director of networks for national district partners with Leading Educators and district leader for inclusive and responsive education in Chicago Public Schools.

Lilly’s lived experiences as a Chicago Public School student also influence her work. As a student, she did not see herself in her educators, content or pedagogy. This had a negative impact on her self-efficacy and is still the lived reality of most students.  When she taught Puerto Rican studies to her children during the pandemic and months later, organized educators around ethnic studies, these experiences deepened her purpose as an educator.

She uses all of her experiences and impact to bring multidimensional understandings and practices of education to her work.

Zemís are figurines the Taino - the indigenous peoples of Borikén (the name of Puerto Rico before Spanish colonization) - believed held ancestral energy and power.  Zemí Coaching & Consulting embodies this return to self.  Through the liberatory learning experiences Zemí offers, educators are given an opportunity to come home to the power and beauty of who they are as individuals and as a community, which then becomes a part of their praxis with young people.