Cindy Hernandez Pastrana

Santa Ana College - School of Continuing Education

Nominated in 2025

Cindy Hernandez Pastrana arrived in the U.S. in January 2024 hailing from Cuernavaca, Mexico. She began her journey as our student in the school of continuing education as an English as a Second Language (ESL) student a few weeks after her arrival as she knew that her time was best spent in school, and she knew that perfecting her English would be handy both in her personal and school life. She also took advantage of our leadership courses during her first semesters as our student.

She has always strived to be a leader and decided to join the school’s Associated Student body. She ran for Treasurer and won. A few months later the group’s Vice-President resigned, and she stepped in to this leadership role and has done wonderful things for our school and ASG body. In this student leader role, she successfully advocated for bringing more student supports for all continuing education students. Now the school has some female hygiene products in restrooms and hygiene kits are available to both male and female students in the Welcome Center. She has also led the charge in bringing various events for our students and she is part of the many students who volunteer in our bi-weekly food distributions.

After learning where the food came that the school distributed to students, she volunteered with Second Harvest of Orange County to prepare food for distribution throughout Orange County. During her visit she was selected to be interviewed by the local Telemundo/NBC station. She shared with them the importance of giving back to our community by volunteering whenever possible and she is also shared the importance of providing food for those most in need.

In October 2024, she joined the Welcome Center team as a short-term substitute Administrative Clerk, once again stepping in when needed. Our center had lost a team member who had recently left, and she took on the role running. She brought with her over a decade of experience in customer service and varied skills in office administration. While in this role she continued to pursue her education moving on to higher level ESL classes and continuing to perfect her computer skills by taking MS Access, PowerPoint, Excel, Keyboarding, and Employability Skills. She is close to completing both her Office Clerk and Administrative Assistant certificates, which she hopes to complete by summer of 2025. Her bilingual skills are an invaluable asset that help her support our students with the many services they request at the center.