Ricky Hurtado

Ricky Hurtado is the Co-Executive Director of LatinxEd (formerly NC Scholars’ Latinx Initiative), a program designed for access to opportunity and healing for Latinx and immigrant youth in North Carolina. The program supports youth, including young men of color, to reclaim their cultural identity in traditional education spaces and to create a pathway to becoming college students and civic leaders. Ricky serves in a geographic region struggling with extreme demographic transformation and experiencing severe racial animosity towards immigrant enclaves that now call North Carolina home. Their program provides bi-weekly supports for immigrant families to have a safe space to embrace their culture, language and receive educational and emotional support to cope with the challenges that come with toxic stress of anti-immigrant attitudes and implicit bias in schools.