GGUSD Superintendent Receives Woman of the Year Recognition

• Thursday, March 3, 2022

At its March 1 meeting, the Garden Grove Unified School District Board of Education honored Superintendent Dr. Gabriela Mafi for her recognition as a 2021 Woman of the Year. The award was presented by Janet Brown, field representative from Congressman Lou Correa’s Office whose Woman of the Year program was designed to celebrate women serving on the front lines and behind scenes to keep communities healthy and safe during the pandemic and beyond. 

“Dr. Mafi is well-deserving of the Woman of the Year recognition for her unwavering dedication to meeting the needs of the 40,000 students and their families who reside in some of the areas that were hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic,” Brown said. “Throughout the pandemic, Dr. Mafi exemplified leadership at its finest, steering staff, students and families toward a future of possibility and hope and ensuring students were well-served in the same way she would care for her own children.”

When schools closed for in-person instruction, Dr. Mafi led the GGUSD initiative to design and implement consistent distance learning guidelines across all school sites. She also coordinated the distribution of devices and free Wi-Fi hotspots to ensure students had access to learning while at home.  

While the majority of GGUSD staff worked from home for the first few months of the stay-at-home order, Dr. Mafi never worked from home, and instead joined our food service workers every week on the front lines, serving free meals to GGUSD families at the district’s 31 Grab and Go distribution sites.

Dr. Mafi always found ways to stay connected to our families – by developing a School Reopening Task Force to gain their input and hosting countless zoom meeting with parents with interpreters who could ensure that parents of all language backgrounds could have a voice. She also maintained strong connections with her mentees and their families to ensure students were accessing distance learning, receiving social-emotional support and that their families’ needs were met during the pandemic, offering help in any way she could.

“This recognition is long overdue.  Throughout the pandemic, Dr. Mafi’s tremendous leadership, tireless work ethic, and grit kept us all focused on doing what was best for students,” said Board of Education Trustee Teri Rocco.

When the vaccine became available, Dr. Mafi was the first superintendent in Orange County to jump at the opportunity to host a vaccination clinic at a GGUSD campus to ensure all employees who wanted to had the opportunity to get vaccinated. She spearheaded a massive vaccination effort, working the clinic every night to ensure it ran smoothly, personally calling employees when extra doses became available.  She was also quick to pursue an opportunity to offer free COVID-19 testing to all students through a partnership with Valencia Labs.

When schools reopened, you could find Dr. Mafi on the front lines again, taking students’ temperatures and helping families understand the new health and safety protocols. She
kept relationship building at the forefront, checking on the needs of principals and teachers to ensure they had the resources to transition to in-person instruction. 

For the district’s nearly 40,000 students and their families and 5,000 employees, Dr. Gabriela Mafi IS the Woman of the Year. 

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