From Our Community: A Partner's Story Comes Full Circle
Ana Ortega is the Youth Hub Coordinator for Southeast LA at Expand LA, a partner of the PLUS ME Project.
She first encountered our work more than a decade ago as a high school junior, sitting in the audience of an assembly.
“I just remember the feeling. The impact… the emotions from hearing the story.”
Ana Ortega dedicates her time to building a network of safe spaces and resources for young people. Through that work, she reconnected with PLUS ME founder and executive director Richard Reyes this spring. She had heard his story once before.
She was a junior at Downtown Magnet High School then, working through a hard stretch. Her grades had dipped during years she spent working alongside her parents, and she was not sure how a student with her transcript would reach the schools she dreamed about. Around that time, her counselor invited PLUS ME to campus, and Richard shared his story with her junior class.
What his story showed her was steadying: the path is rarely straight, and an imperfect route is still a route.
"These journeys aren't perfect, and especially if you're Latino or a first-generation student, the pathways to success are not always linear."
The next year, that perspective changed how Ana approached her college applications.
"I started to be very intentional. Let me tell you the story you can't see in my transcript."
She was accepted to UCLA, Occidental, Smith, Scripps, and Wellesley College, where she enrolled and graduated in 2022.
An ode to her younger self
After college, Ana spent two years in the domestic violence sector before moving into countywide youth work in Los Angeles. Away from the job, she writes. "I consider myself a storyteller," she said.
Storytelling also shows up in her daily work, where she is deliberate about how stories are told. Before she asks a young person to share, she shares a piece of herself first, the same practice PLUS ME facilitators follow in every workshop.
"I try not to be extractive, and I try not to lose the human element. It's more impactful when you allow yourself to be human."
That instinct came full circle a few years ago. At a white coat ceremony for a friend entering medical school, Ana met her friend's younger sister, Kelly, a rising senior. Kelly mentioned that Wellesley was her dream school, not knowing she was seated beside an alumna. Ana offered to help, and over Kelly's senior year she worked with her on her personal statement. When Kelly hesitated to apply for the PLUS ME My Story Matters LISTEN Scholarship, Ana passed along what she had carried since that high school assembly.
“You never really know what your story is going to evoke in someone.”
Kelly applied, and became a 2025 LISTEN recipient and shared her story on stage, with Ana in the audience. Afterward, Ana recalls, Kelly told her she had surprised herself: she had never thought she could say her story out loud. Kelly now attends Wellesley College.
Helping young people put their experiences into words is a consistent part of Ana’s work. Many of the students she serves in Southeast LA are navigating fear and instability, and some are weighing whether it is even safe to apply to college. But she wants them to know their stories still matter, even the ones they only write down for themselves.
“It could literally be a lifeline.”
Ana describes the work as an ode to her younger self. More than a decade ago, Ana sat in an assembly and heard one story. She has been paying it forward ever since.
At PLUS ME, we believe that making meaning of our experiences and giving voice to them is how confidence takes root, and how it travels from one person to the next. We are grateful for partners like Ana and Expand LA who carry that belief into their own communities across Los Angeles.
To learn more about partnering with PLUS ME, schedule a call or email us at info@theplusmeproject.org.
