Tapped for leadership
Director of Latino center in Hazelwood won a new scholarship to attend CMU academy
Rosamaria Cristello was handling a crisis at the Latino Family Center in Hazelwood when the phone rang one day last August.
Because she was expecting a call from a detective involved in the case she was working on, Ms. Cristello, site director of the center, didn’t hesitate to answer. But it wasn’t the police. The call was to inform Ms. Cristello that she had won the Barbara McNees Spirit of Athena Scholarship. The award includes full tuition to Carnegie Mellon University’s Leadership and Negotiation Academy, a six-month intensive program for women that immerses them in skills like coping with conflict, decisionmaking and effective communications.
The timing proved ideal for Ms. Cristello.
Since tensions surrounding immigration issues escalated during last year’s presidential campaign and the election of Donald Trump, her experience at the leadership academy has helped her work assisting Latinos in the Pittsburgh region, she said.
The Latino Family Center, a nonprofit operated by the Allegheny Intermediate Unit, supports immigrant families with advocacy, legal issues, prenatal and other health care classes, home visits, after-school care for children and English language classes.
It currently serves about 300 families — many of whom now live in fear because of the Trump administration’s promises to crack down on undocumented and illegal immigrants in the U.S.
Since the election, more families have sought assistance from the center, which also provides mental health therapists for parents and children under stress.
For some who don’t want to leave their homes because they fear being picked up by local or federal authorities and possibly deported, “We are taking more of our services to them,” Ms. Cristello said.
The training and coaching she received during 100-plus hours at the CMU academy from September to March included being thrown into negotiations on real-life issues with other program participants.
“It was a nerve-wracking exercise to negotiate randomly in front of everyone and be rated by classmates,” she said. “But in those situations, you can identify emotions and how to