Rosa María Santana is a former award-winning journalist and educator. She has taught at the University of Southern California, Santa Monica College and Mount San Antonio College in Walnut, Calif. She has advocated for racial and ethnic parity in U.S. newsrooms.

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In 2015, she was a Communications Deputy for Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda L. Solis, a former U.S. Secretary of Labor during the Obama Administration. In 2017, the Office of the President pro Tempore of the State Senate Kevin de León appointed Santana to serve on a state committee.

 

She was the West Coast Parity Project Associate Director for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists from 2005 to 2007. Through the Parity Project, she worked closely with West Coast newsrooms that sought to increase the number of Latinos working for them. She organized community forums, bringing local residents and journalists together to talk about news coverage of area Latinos. 

 

As a freelance writer, she has written and produced radio segments for PRI’s The Tavis Smiley Show, NPR’s Latino USA and Pacifica Radio’s KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles. She has also written several newspaper commentaries for the Washington, D.C.-based Hispanic Link News Service. One of her essays appears in the book, “Dear Dad: Reflections on Fatherhood.”

 

A former newspaper reporter, Santana worked for such publications as The Arlington Morning News in Texas, The Chicago Tribune and The Plain Dealer in Cleveland. While at The Arlington Morning News, she won two first-place awards from the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors for her series about Mexican American triplets preparing for their fifteenth birthday. 

 

From 1999 to 2003, she was elected to serve on the Board of Directors for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists representing Latino journalists in the Midwest. She organized several Midwest journalism conferences and fundraisers to support scholarships for journalism students.

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A Mexican American, Santana began her teaching career in 2005 at Los Angeles Trade-Tech College, a community college in downtown Los Angeles. She has also taught at USC Annenberg School of Journalism, Santa Monica College, Mount San Antonio College, Azusa Pacific University and Cal Poly Pomona. Santana is an alumna of the Hispanas Organized for Political Equality (HOPE) Leadership Institute.