OUR FOUNDER

Lisa Oglesby Rocha
Lisa Oglesby Rocha dedicated fifteen years of her life to the mission of AVANCE-Dallas, founding the organization in 1996 and serving faithfully until September 2011. Through her tireless efforts, she established AVANCE-Dallas as a respected organization. She expanded the agency from being a startup with five employees, three sites and a budget of $300,000 to a staff that exceeded 50 employees and served more than 2,000 parents and children annually across 33 sites, with a budget of $1.9 million dollars. During her tenure at AVANCE-Dallas, she did her best to improve the Dallas community.
Accomplishments
- Executive Director of AVANCE-Dallas 1996-2011.
- Co-author of articles on education
- Participant in a panel of the Department of Education of the United States, Richard Riley, in the meeting of Satellite City: “Nurturing Readers: Building and Sustaining Community Reading Programs”.
- Honors:
- Outstanding Individual Award from the Dallas County Women’s Council (May 2017)
- Dallas Business Journal’s CFO of the Year award for community service (Oct 2009)
- Dreams, Doers and Unsung Heroes of the Real Estate Council (November 2007)