Karla Monterroso is committed to closing the opportunity gap for Black and Latinx people in the United States. Since joining Code2040 in 2014, where she is currently the acting CEO, she has grown the number of students served from 25 to 4,000, ushered in several new successful programs, and stewarded critical organizational development practices and policies around values and racial equity. Prior to Code2040, she served as the National Director of Advocate Engagement at Health Leads; where she developed the recruitment systems, performance management tools and national training standards, structures, and curricula that allowed Health Leads to scale. Her passion for equity and social justice comes from her upbringing in a low-income community with Latinx parents who instilled in her a love for her culture and dedicated their lives to making sure she was the first in her family to go to and graduate college. Karla is an alumnus of the University of Southern California.