The Latino Professionals Association Celebrates Latine Heritage Month with Yo Soy! A Journey to Community
Karen Menendez Coller earned her Ph.D. on public health from John Hopkins University in Baltimore.
by Jonathan Gramling
Karen Menendez Coller, the CEO of Centro Hispano, is a very friendly, community-oriented individual. She leads Centro more like a community organizer than the CEO of a staff of 48 people who operates from the top down. She is genuinely concerned about children and families and their well-being.
But complementary to this concern for people is Menendez Coller’s intellectual curiosity that earned her a Ph.D. in public health from John Hopkins University in Baltimore. She is always curious about the community and society and the best ways to make things better. Within that natural curiosity, She wonders how Centro can serve the Latino community better. Her curiosity keeps her one step ahead of the game as she seeks continued improvement.
“I’ve always been very curious,” Menendez Coller said. I’ve always been wanting to understand, ‘Why is that?’ ‘Why do I feel this way? Why do things work this way?’ And so that has always been on my mind I’ve always been interested in connecting the dots and how we can do things better.”.
Menendez Coller’s journey began in El Salvador where she was born.
“I’m an immigrant,” Menendez Coller said. “That’s a strong part of my identity. I grew up in LA through my high school years. I’m also very connected with family, with my immediate family, but also extended family with cousins, relatives from the U.S., but also back in El Salvador. And then I moved around. I went to college in the Bay Area at UC-Berkeley. I moved around. I worked at the hospital for a little bit. I applied for grad school. I got my master’s in public health at the University of Michigan. So I was in Ann Arbor for a little bit. And then I took a break. I’m a believer in breaks and
a lot of reflection. And I worked at the state in Sacramento in California for a while. And then I decided that I still needed more tools. And things weren’t getting better. We need to do things better. That’s when I went back to grad school again. This time, I went out to Baltimore. And I really loved it there. That’s where I got my doctorate in public health. I met my partner and we moved back to California.”
And all along the way, Menendez Coller was taking everything in, evaluating and figuring out the path she should take.
“There have been a bunch of different stages of my life,” Menendez Coller said. “When I was more embedded in the sciences, I thought I was going to be a scientist. Or then I thought I would go to med school. ‘Oh, that’s not for me. I’m going to try to go to public health school.’ And I think it’s always about trying to find your way and listening to what you are experiencing. And then you are kind of figuring it out along the way. I’m not one who has had a direct path. But I think that’s what life is all about. You enjoy the moment. And sometimes you wake up and you are sleepy. And you are grateful for that. You’re just trying to figure things out as you go along. All we have is right now. I guess that is part of my journey.”
Menendez Coller is constantly taking every stage of her life as a learning situation.
“I went to John Hopkins University,” Menendez Coller said. “I was there for 4-5 years. That was a very intense and fulfilling experience. There weren’t many minority students, not from my background, where I came from and all of that. There weren’t too many immigrants. There were a lot of international students. I learned a lot from them as peers. Those experiences teach you how to be okay with who you are in different spaces, not tumultuous spaces, but to connect with who you are so that you can always be strong and keep doing you no matter whatever role you are in. I think that has helped me at Centro a lot.”
From Sacramento, Menendez Coller and her partner got jobs with UW-Madison.
“It involved research in Obstetrics and Gynecology,” Menendez Coller said. “And then I’ve always liked having community partnerships for my work. I actually just started seeing what are the Latino organizations that are doing work in the community. And Centro came up. And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, they have a job opening.’ And again, I had this tiny bit of curiosity. And I said, ‘I know I have a position, but let me see what that is all about.’ Something drew me to it. I have always been inspired and felt I fit in a lot more in the community than in academia. And I said, ‘Well, I have always thought about that, doing the work from where I’m from, from where our families are.’ And so I went in and I interviewed and I met Gloria. Dave Dahmer was there and Sujhey Beisser. I just really took to the place. They made me an offer, which I was kind of surprised about too because they had to be taking a risk on someone who is coming from another world. But I think they saw who I was as a human being and a person.“
When Menendez Coller took the reins at Centro Hispano, there were seven staff people. And Centro rented out 50 percent of its space or more to other organizations.
“At that point, we were kind of running the Schools of Hope Elementary Program in partnership with United Way,” Menendez Coller said. “There was a workforce association that rented space. The Latino Chamber had their offices there. The Wisconsin Medical Project was in the back. Those were all people whom I connected with. They kind of ushered me in. I don’t think they know that, but they made me feel more at home. It was nice.”
Centro did not remain static under Menendez Coller’s leadership. Centro now has 48 staff.
“We kept growing from there,” Menendez Coller recalled. “I still love to cover receptions because I learn a lot. When Jacqueline who was our only case manager at the time, was busy, sometimes I would sit down with people and help out. I would oversee the youth team. Now we are really blessed to have a youth team manager and Norma, the director of programs and Arturo who is helping us with some of the strategies. We’re heavy on the youth side. We were doing a lot of like volunteers would come and help out with employment and with resumes. And we had a CNA track, but we wanted to keep growing that and really think about what we could do with adults.”
For Menendez Coller, it wasn’t just about running youth programs and helping students get to college. It was helping to mold how they interfaced with the world.
“I’m a big believer in having a broad perspective,” Menendez Coller said. “We always tell the kids at Centro, ‘Get out there.’ Sometimes it might feel scary. But if you have even a tiny little piece of curiosity in you that wonders, ‘What is out there?’ All of those experiences really shape your world view and I think it makes us better human beings. I’m a big proponent of that’s the full-blown education. I think you have to be a good human being first and then you make the best decisions in your life. And you can learn along the way. That’s the biggest gift that my parents gave to me by allowing us to come here. And for me to have the education that I did, I look to give back to this world.”
In order for Centro to grow and still provide quality services, it has been necessary for Menendez Coller to empower the people who were below her on the organization chart.
“I’ve learned during my time at Centro about organizing and movements. And how to do them in an authentic — from what I have observed — and committed way and what might be the right way to do and what might be the wrong way to do it. Sometimes that top down approach doesn’t work. Human beings, by nature, are flawed. It can misdirect you. And always checking yourself and making sure that you are doing it for the right reason. What am I learning? And then reflecting along the way. We have Evelyn who leads our evaluation work. We talk a lot about, ‘Of course, we are into our final goals and the endgame and impact. But this is for the long haul at Centro, so we have to reflect along the way to make sure that we are learning, adjusting, making sure that we are seeing our impact throughout.’”
Menendez Coller and her staff are never satisfied and are constantly evaluating where to go from here, how can they serve the community better.
“We’re at a very interesting time at Centro,” Menendez Coller said. “We’re thinking about our story. How do we communicate that, but also really, really being mindful on focusing on quality certainly over quantity and that we are growing mindfully that it makes sense. We’re doing a lot of that kind of reflection pretty regularly.”
All of the growth has sometimes come at a cost. When Centro built Calli several years ago, it meant leaving its old headquarters on Badger Road with its rich history and beautiful murals gracing its walls inside and out.
“All of us are sad about it too,” Menendez Coller said. “It’s a complex situation. There are a lot of needs in the city. Sometimes decisions get made as they are. Sometimes they reflect that and part of me wishes that we could have kept our hands on this because then we would be able to develop that site in the way that we would want to or take care of it. But COVID was just happening. The opportunity came up. And hindsight is always 20-20, but I always think about that too and how we would do it differently. I’m still really interested in development work. I learned a lot through building our building and how to do it mindfully and community-based and who to partner with for these kinds of things so that you don’t make the same mistakes all the time.”
Menendez Coller has worked hard to help the Latine community move forward for the past 13 years. And that work and progress caught the eye of the Latino Professionals Association who made her a 2026 Yo Soy honoree.
“It’s so great to be recognized,” Menendez Coller said. “I think more so because during the same time when there is so much trauma and heaviness that we need to celebrate who we are, our people as working people in this community. And yes we are evolving and we are growing as professionals. I never quite know what that term means. Bit it means community to me. And it’s been a place where in the past I have been able to go and felt like I could take a breath and be amongst friends. And we are going to be okay. That means a lot. And I think getting the recognition from within my community is always meaningful.”
Karen Menendez Coller has led Centro Hispano on a strong path of service to the Latino Community and beyond. And that is a wonderful thought.
