We are pleased to welcome Juan Louro to the YouthQuest Foundation team. He joined us as Operations Manager this month.
Juan brings to the job a deep, personal appreciation for YouthQuest’s mission to serve at-risk youth.
“I understand what it means for a child to be at-risk because I experienced it myself growing up,” he said.
Born and raised in a small community outside of Fresno, California, Juan didn’t speak English when he started school. In his hometown, young Latinos like him saw drugs and violence all around them. They were constantly under pressure to join gangs. He credits his mother and his middle school guidance counselor with keeping him away from trouble.
Juan understands the way many at-risk kids look at life – and what it takes to help them see things differently.
“I know they don’t realize there’s a world outside of the three to six blocks where they grow up,” he explained.
Juan’s thinking began to change when his guidance counselor took him and his classmates to visit Fresno State University about 20 years ago.
“That opened my eyes. I remember it just like it was yesterday,” he said. “I’d never seen anything like it and, for the first time, I thought about going to college.”
That new experience at Fresno State planted a seed. A few years later, Juan found himself in a new environment where the seed would grow.
His family moved across the country to Tampa, Florida, where he attended a high school that was unlike anything he’d known in California.
“The expectations were high. Something like 97 percent of the kids from the high school I attended went on to college,” Juan recalled. “The question became not if I was going to graduate from high school, but what I was going to do after I graduated.”
Juan got serious about his education and his future. He graduated from the University of South Florida with a BA in Business Administration. After working as an office manager for a construction company in Tampa, Juan moved to Northern Virginia five years ago. He lives in Alexandria with his wife and their two children, a 3-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter.
Before coming to YouthQuest, he spent two years with the International Association of Chiefs of Police as Executive Assistant to the Executive Office and point of contact for the Global Affairs Department. He also was an Administrative Assistant at Daon Trusted Identity Services, a TSA contractor, for two years.
Juan’s duties at YouthQuest include daily operations management, event coordination and financial oversight. We are confident his skills, experience and insights will be instrumental in expanding our 3D ThinkLink Initiative and other programs for at-risk youth as we enter our second decade as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
