Welcome new staff

Excited to share profiles here of two new staff members!  

Program Support Manager Imaltzin Astorga

Imaltzin Astorga joined us in January as a Program Support Manager, staffing Black Star Project, Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corporation, Illinois Migrant Council, and ONE Northside. 

Imaltzin brings a long track record of community organizing and parent support experience to her new role. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she pivoted from college at Eastern Illinois University to helping at Southwest Organizing Project (a profile of her work at SWOP is here) . There, she took on progressively more responsibility.

Imaltzin started as a contact tracer, then helped run the Chicago Connected digital equity initiative, where she provided more than 2,000 learning hours to help parents develop online and computer skills. She also coordinated SWOP’s New Americans Initiative citizenship program. When the opportunity came to join PEI as a Parent Support Manager, her years of parent engagement work made it a natural next step, Imaltzin says:  "I've seen how much building someone's capacity and leadership can just change and transform someone's life,” she says. “I feel very appreciative and challenged to be here, in a really good way.”

Program Support Manager Janel Pilate

Janel joined in December as a Parent Support Manager, supporting West Side Justice Center, Project Success of Vermillion County, and People for Community Recovery.

Janel’s path to a career with children and families led her from the Chicago South Side to a job in the suburbs with American Academy of Pediatrics and back again. Laid off from the  Academy in January 2023, she bounced back the following month when the South Side Help Center—the community center she went to as a teenager— offered her a role as their first-ever Parent Mentor Program organizer.

Over three years as South Side Help Center’s Parent Mentor Program organizer, she learned to support parents and schools. She was looking for a new work challenge beyond the community again in the fall when Parent Engagement Institute co-director Bridget Murphy invited her to apply for a Parent Support Manager role.

“I am now back rooted in the community that shaped me into who I am,” she says. “I wanted to get into an environment where I can learn how to organize better and now I get to work with the best organizers that I have ever met in my life.”

Also, for fun: check out Janel, aka Coach J, on a recent Wheel of Fortune episode!