Rosalina Alcalde

With a PhD with Honours in Sociology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), Rosalina Alcalde also holds a master’s degree in Public and Social Policies from Pompeu Fabra University (UPF)-John Hopkins University and has been engaged in teaching and university research in the field of educational inequalities for over fifteen years. She has worked on various social consultancy projects and has been an advisor on and designed socio-educational projects addressed to children at risk.

“If I am what I am today, as a person committed to fighting social and educational inequalities, it is because I was once an early school dropout. I was born in Palma de Mallorca many years ago, as a member of a family clan in which no one had ever had the chance to study anything more than the ‘three Rs’. My grandparents knew how to read but not how to write; my parents went to a school where they were made to sit in the back row because they had been on the losing side in the Civil War; my uncles and aunts had been hard workers for all of their lives; and my cousins suffered the school failure for which I was destined as well”.

Rosalina’s escape from this social determinism encourages her every day to keep working on projects for educational change and transformation. And this is why she takes on the challenge of leading the Foundation’s strategy against dropping out, seeking solutions and answers that can enable us to fight against this scourge.