During Women’s History Month, AFSA is featuring profiles of some of our outstanding women school leaders.

Dianne Huslin’s journey to becoming founding principal of the award-winning, Gates Foundation-funded High School of Science and Technology in San Diego was a long one — and it didn’t end there. Today, Dianne, president of Administrators Association Sweetwater Union, AFSA Local 150, says she has no intention of retiring anytime soon.

Raised in Pico Rivera, California, known as “the Mexican Mayberry,” Dianne Guirado, as she was known at the time, enjoyed a pretty idyllic upbringing. She spoke Spanish, but her parents were immigrants from Cuba, not Mexico.

“It was a neat community because generation upon generation lived there,” she says. “The parks were always full. The schools were very good.”

Her father, an electrician for RCA, and her mother, first a homemaker and later a real estate agent, had a strong work ethic. Education was of the utmost importance.

“The best thing about where I came from was that the schools were very caring, with many role models of both sexes offering many opportunities to us,” she says. “At El Rancho High School, they taught us how to be successful.”

Among her teachers were Karen Mainard, who may have been the main reason Dianne went into biology, and Jim Dyson and Ben Meza, who made her love history.

When she went to the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she majored in biology, she found it so beautiful she thought she had “gone to heaven.” But while there, she interned at a hospital and quickly realized medicine was too hands-on for her. After graduating, she started working in a lab and found it not hands-on enough.

So, in 1992, she became a full-time teacher of English and math on an emergency credential at her alma mater, El Rancho High School. She laughs: “I had no experience, no training. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done, and still I had so much fun being at a school.”

After earning a teaching credential in biology and Spanish at California State University, Los Angeles, she went on to teach science at El Cajon Valley High School and Kearny High School in San Diego.

Soon afterward, she became an intern support adviser for the San Diego Unified School District and then a science administrator at Kearny High School. Her administrative career had begun.

“Looking back, it seems as if I was getting selected for things without really pursuing them,” she says. “A mentor at Kearny, Cheryl Seelos, was commanding, fair and strong, and I wanted to be like her.”

The biggest break of all came when she became founding principal of the School of Science and Technology, a highly diverse urban school, where she stayed for 11 years.

“We worked with teachers from scratch to build this school,” she says. “The founding teachers had a big say. I loved that, and I loved the career themes.”

The neighborhood was 70% Mexican, and 90% qualified for free or reduced-price lunch.

“Not all the students were easy,” Dianne says. “I remember one young lady who was smart and a born leader, but she was very rough. When I talked to her about her clothes — her underwear showing — she cursed me out. I waited and eventually told her she was a diamond in the rough, and she was very surprised I wasn’t mad at her.”

Thanks to an appeal from the school staff, the student was accepted at San Diego State University. When Dianne ran into her a few years later, she was an attorney for the military.

“This is what educators like and what keeps us going,” Dianne says. “You have to have a sense of connection and a sense of family.”

Dianne helped cultivate an environment of sustained success and growth, resulting in California Partnership Academies grant awards to support medical technology and green engineering occupations. When Newsweek editors noticed the school was succeeding in a community that historically had not, they named it one of the nation’s Best High Schools.

In 2015, Dianne took a break to become director of the Teacher Preparation and Support Department for the San Diego Unified School District. However, she missed running a school and, after two years, became principal of Olympian High School. She is now principal of Eastlake High School.

“These last two schools have fairly high-achieving students,” she says. “Some people ask me how I can stand to have such involved parents, but I tell them all parents are involved in their kids’ lives.”

The mother of two boys and two girls, Dianne certainly understands. A principal and union activist, she scarcely has a free moment. As president of her two-year-old local, she was jubilant in late January when they completed collective bargaining and won a new contract.

“For a woman, there are rough moments, but I believe you have to go after your passion,” she says. “No, I don’t know how I did it. Maybe if you enjoy what you’re doing, a lot of the time it doesn’t seem like work.” She adds, “My mom’s a pretty salty character and gave me that fighting spirit.”

Now, one of her sons is a paramedic, one is studying to be a teacher, one of her daughters is entering the Air Force after finishing at San Diego State University, and her youngest daughter is a junior at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Today, Dianne has time to work in her garden, run frequently and compete in half marathons.

“If you want to do something, just do it,” she says.

As a child, she was a bit of a tomboy and once stole her brother’s motorcycle. She now has her license and her own bike and says riding her motorcycle is the most fun of all.