Shirley Torres
“Mt. SAC didn’t just help me with a career and a good living. It provided me with finding my life’s purpose.”
Shirley Torres
Chief Program Officer, Homeboy Industries
Shirley Torres is living her wildest dream.
As the Chief Program Officer for Homeboy Industries, the largest gang rehabilitation program and therapeutic community in the country, she works to break the cycle of intergenerational violence and trauma by providing a healing space for people to increase their choices and chances.
During a visit with Mt. SAC students this Fall, she said she owes much of her success today to her experience here. “This place changed the trajectory of my life,” said Torres, who has been named the college’s 2024 Alumna of the Year.
Growing up in South Los Angeles, surrounded by gangs and violence, Torres didn’t know anyone who chose what they did for a living, let alone who went to college. “I am Latina, a first-generation college student, and I don’t come from a legacy of doctors and lawyers,” Torres said. “I come from a legacy of hard workers and struggle, of people who had a hunger for a better
life.”
Torres shared that attending college wasn’t her plan, calling it an ”accident” that she was at Mt. SAC in the summer of 1998. She had come at the invitation of a friend and was recruited into the first cohort of a new program called Summer Bridge, a six-week program that supports recent high school graduates as they transition to college life.
“I was a little bit lost and a little bit cautious but I remember thinking I have to give myself a shot,” she said. “The invitation to the Summer Bridge program was really a great awakening for me. Mt. SAC didn’t just help me with a career and a good living. It provided me with finding my life’s purpose.”
With patience and support from counselors and professors who believed in her until she could believe in
herself, Torres transferred from Mt. SAC to UCLA, where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree. Later, Torres would go on to earn a master’s degree from USC.
She has been at Homeboy Industries for 20 years, and in her current capacity, leads the agency in strategies to receive, engage, and retain citizens returning from California state and federal prisons, county jail, and juvenile detention facilities. Prior to her current role, Torres served as the director of Re-entry Services, providing leadership and oversight to several departments, including education and workforce development.
“I work with amazing homeboys and homegirls who never had a chance to make it in their own lives,” Torres said. “And I’m able to do that because I came to this campus and people held me until I could believe in myself. I was loyal to my dream and I invite you to do the same.”