Cecilia Preciado Burciaga opened doors into higher education that had been closed to Latino and Chicano Americans.

As one of the first top Latina administrators at Stanford University, Burciaga never stopped thinking about “the ones not there,” she said in an interview with The Christian Science Monitor. And the ones not there were Latinos and Chicanos, who prior to the 1970s made up a disproportionately small number of students in higher education. When she started at Stanford in 1974, just 2 percent of the student body was Mexican American; Burciaga was just one of a handful of Chicanos on staff, according to Notable Hispanic American Women.

You can read more about Cecilia Burciaga and other amazing figures here.