Maria “Lou” Calanche was raised in Northeast Los Angeles in the Ramona Gardens community of Boyle Heights. From an early age, she gained a deep appreciation for the strength of community while navigating the challenges of limited city services, gang activity, and racial tensions that were prevalent in her neighborhood.

Lou is a natural organizer and problem solver. Her own experiences with hardship exposed her to the systemic inequities that burden families like hers. Through this she witnessed firsthand how structural barriers denied her community access to opportunities that should be fundamental rights, not privileges.

At 19, while working at her former elementary school, Lou listened as students shared their concerns that gangs had taken over the local park, leaving them with almost no safe places to gather after school. Determined to make a difference and despite never having played the sport herself, Lou launched a girls’ softball program. What began as a simple effort to reclaim the park quickly grew into a community movement—transforming the space into a safe and vibrant hub and providing hundreds of young girls with mentorship, friendship, and a sense of possibility. This experience inspired Lou to dedicate her life to public service. She began working tirelessly for her community as a field deputy for the late Councilmember Richard Alatorre. In that role, she gained an inside view of how City Hall operates and—more importantly—how too often it fails to serve communities like hers. In 1998, she made a vow to always stand shoulder-to-shoulder with her neighbors and to fight for equitable services, fair representation, and the dignity every community deserves. As a professor of political science at East Los Angeles College for over 18 years, Lou deepened her passion for shaping young minds and recognized the critical importance of providing educational support, mentorship, and developing the next generation of leaders. During her time as a professor she volunteered in the community of Ramona Gardens, where she grew up, committed to preventing youth from joining gangs and creating a pathway to college opportunities by providing them access to programs and resources. Working closely with the mothers of Ramona Gardens, in 2007 Lou founded Legacy LA—a nonprofit addressing the impact of multi- generational gang violence and low educational attainment in Ramona Gardens and surrounding neighborhoods in the City of Los Angeles. Legacy LA is now an organization recognized nationwide as a model of youth development and gang-prevention serving more than 350 youth, young adults, and family members each year.