Stela Radovanovic
Executive Director
Stela Radovanovic is a dedicated leader in the field of education with a focus on multilingual learners. Most recently, she served as Executive Director for Research, Instruction, and Professional Learning in the NYC Department of Education’s Division of Multilingual Learners (DML). Throughout her career, she has supported teachers and administrators through professional development and created instructional resources tailored to multilingual learners.
Stela co-founded Language Unity Collaborative: Educational Solutions (LUCES) out of a deep conviction that research-driven practices must be accessible to schools and educators serving diverse students. She wanted to create a bridge between research and classroom practice, ensuring that educators are equipped to provide all multilingual learners with meaningful access to grade-level content. Central to this vision is her belief that literacy and language development must go hand in hand for multilingual learners to thrive.
Over the course of 30 years working in New York City public schools, Stela led and supported major literacy initiatives that expanded opportunities for NYC students. Her work consistently centered on the intersection of literacy and language development, ensuring that multilingual learners could build strong literacy skills while continuing to grow in their home and new languages. She also guided work in large bilingual programs in Spanish and Vietnamese, as well as English as a New Language (ENL) settings. These experiences have deepened her belief that multilingual learners—regardless of proficiency—are capable of rigorous, grade-level engagement. This vision continues to guide her work and serves as the foundation of LUCES’s mission to empower educators and students in NYC and beyond.
Rachel Hoff
Chief Learning Officer
Rachel brings an impressive 28 years of transformative experience within the NYC Public Schools system, where she has dedicated her career to enhancing academic opportunities for multilingual learners. Her journey began as a founding teacher at a high school tailored for newly arrived students, where she first grasped the intricate needs of adolescent multilingual learners.
At both district and central levels, Rachel spearheaded initiatives aimed at supporting Students with Interrupted Education (SIFE), including the management of an annual $3.1 million grant distributed to schools across New York City. This initiative harnessed the collective expertise of educators, creating robust academic and social-emotional supports crucial for student success.
Rachel supported collaborations with local and national experts to create the first national SIFE screener and accompanying curriculum resources. These tools are designed to recognize and build on the unique strengths and assets SIFE students bring to the classroom, all while accelerating their language and content development.
Her problem-solving approach is particularly unique, as she skillfully identifies opportunities for increasing internal capacity within school communities, empowering leaders and teachers to play their vital roles in advancing multilingual learners’ achievements. Rachel’s leadership within the K-12 literacy team of the Division of Multilingual Learners has been pivotal, fostering professional development and resource creation for English as a New Language (ENL) and bilingual programs.
Believing in the power of collaboration, Rachel actively engages with researchers, community organizations, and expert partners to achieve common goals. Her recent advocacy for multilingual learners within NYC Reads, one of the city’s largest educational initiatives, best reflects her commitment to ensuring that every student has the opportunity to thrive in a supportive and enriching environment.
Daicy Diaz-Granados
Bilingual Education Expert Advisor
Daicy Diaz-Granados holds a Ph.D. in Urban Education from the CUNY Graduate Center and a Master’s Degree in Bilingual Education from The City College of New York. Her award-winning dissertation is based on oral histories and life stories which were analyzed to identify the components of agentic and empowering educational experiences of traditionally marginalized students.
A lifelong educator, Daicy began her teaching career at the Dual Language Middle School in New York City where she helped develop and implement a dual language curriculum in social studies, literature, writing and geography in both English and Spanish that was rigorous, culturally sustaining and through which students saw their lives, histories and culture reflected. Early on in her teaching career, Daicy witnessed the agentic power of an educational model in which a student’s linguistic repertoires, strengths, culture, family, community and identity were celebrated and centered in the curriculum and pedagogy, and the importance of research-based educational inquiry.
With over 25 years experience in education, she draws from her expertise as a teacher, administrator, professional development content creator/facilitator, curriculum writer, researcher, and scholar to provide resources and support to educators, administrators, multilingual learners, and immigrant-origin families.