Claudia Barillas was 12 years old when her family moved from Mexico to Los Angeles. Despite her struggle to learn a new language and culture, Barillas found support in her newly discovered faith community, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where members encouraged her to pursue higher education and embrace her culture. Those mentors changed Barillas’s vision for her life: “I wanted to do the same for others,” she says.
Barillas graduated from California State University, Los Angeles, with a degree in social work and big dreams. “I wanted to eradicate hunger and help everyone in the world,” she says. She felt that a master’s degree in social work would make those big dreams possible, and she’d always wanted to attend Brigham Young University. So she eventually moved her young family to Provo, took prerequisite classes, and applied to BYU’s master’s in social work program in 2020. She was placed on the waitlist—a curveball that she’s now grateful for.
At the time, Barillas was working for the Provo School District as a student family advocate coordinator for Latino students and their families. Her work increased her awareness of the high frequency of behavioral issues, dropout rates, drug abuse, and teenage pregnancies in the Latino student population. “I felt like these families’ needs were like a gushing wound,” she describes, “and all I was doing was putting a bandage on it.”
Barillas found herself asking: “How do I help? How do I help fix this?”
As she was searching for ways to make a difference, Nadia Cates, a parent in the community, approached her with an idea for a program called Ella Rises that would focus on reconnecting Latino young women to their cultural roots through art. Barillas helped launch a one-month pilot program that included art nights and cultural activities, not expecting how much she would connect with the participants. “The girls trusted us enough to open up about really hard issues that they were dealing with,” she says. “There was a bigger need than what we thought.”
Barillas and Cates decided to extend the program, and on top of that, Barillas still wanted to pursue a master’s degree at BYU. After sharing her work with Ella Rises with a friend in the executive MPA program at the BYU Marriott School of Business, Barillas was encouraged to apply—and got in. “I think it was divine design,” she says.
During the program, Barillas was able to apply everything she was learning to her nonprofit work. “It was really good to have Ella Rises during my three years of the EMPA program, because every project was focused on Ella Rises.” Her assignments helped her develop the organization’s structure, create its bylaws, strengthen its existing programs, and establish its 501(c)(3) status. “Ella Rises helped make tangible all the things that I was learning in the program.”
The hands-on learning wasn’t the only benefit Barillas found in the program—she says the support from her cohort and the professors was also invaluable. Barillas leaned into that support to help her tackle one of the biggest challenges for Ella Rises: finding funding. Chris Silva, associate professor and Stewart Grow Fellow at BYU Marriott’s Romney Institute of Public Service and Ethics, helped Barillas gather qualitative data to determine which of the foundation’s programs was most effective and where to focus fundraising. Alexander Jensen, associate professor in the School of Family Life, invited Barillas to present about the program in one of his classes, and his students helped analyze the data. Then Liz Dixon, an associate professor of management communication, helped Barillas turn the finalized data into a flyer that Barillas could use to tell the nonprofit’s story and show the impact Ella Rises was having on the program participants.
“It took a year to go get the data, but it was a very rewarding learning experience,” she says. “And having that support to actually meet with organizations and present our story—it was awesome.”
As Barillas was expanding Ella Rises and finishing her EMPA capstone project, she felt inspired to update her résumé and look for new professional opportunities. That search led her to posting for a human services manager at the Utah County government offices. “As I was reading the description, I felt this powerful feeling, like I’ve been prepared my whole life for this job—it felt like it was made just for me.”
A few weeks later, Barillas landed the job. In her new role, she’s creating a program to assist families in Utah County navigating intergenerational poverty. “The program fills my need to make a long, lasting, meaningful impact,” she says. “I’m helping to heal the gushing wound. I’m helping to provide a solution that will affect not just this person we’re working with, but also generations to come.”
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Written by Sarah Griffin Anderson
