Liliana Bustos

Liliana Bustos Garcia currently serves as the Chief Instructional Officer for Bright Star Schools, where she sets the strategic vision, design, and direction for teaching and learning across all nine of Bright Star’s schools.

Lily began her education leadership career at Aspire Public Schools. There, she held various roles during her 15-year tenure, including TK-5th grade teacher, reading specialist within the intervention capacity, dean of culture for a middle school, interim principal, and principal of a charter public elementary school within the Huntington Park community. As Aspire’s Director of Language and Culture, Lily led English Language Development programming for 38 schools across 3 regions in California and oversaw the organization’s Pro-Black programming.

Most recently, Lily served as the Interim Chief Academic Officer for Extera Public Schools in the heart of the Boyle Heights/East Los Angeles community. At Extera, Lily developed a rigorous and equitable academic program that streamlined systems of supports, built the capacity of the team, and increased academic achievement.

Born and raised in northeast Los Angeles, Lily received her bachelor’s degree in education and master’s degree in school leadership and administration from Loyola Marymount University, where she also gained experience working with children as young as 6 weeks old and cemented her passion for advocating for children to be able to reach their fullest potential.