It was 41 years ago that Delfina Lira Negrete gave her husband an ultimatum: Camerino Lira would not make another 900-mile work trek from Mexico to Dallas unless the entire family came along and settled there for good.
The couple had three little girls, the youngest just one year old, and Delfina grieved that she was bringing daughters into the world only for them to suffer the same lot as her own — a backbreaking, soul-crushing life with no chance for education or opportunity.
She wouldn’t give in: We’re coming with you because I need to give my girls a chance.
Delfina finally wore Camerino down — a victory that would lift up the lives of their own children and, eventually, those of thousands of Dallas students.
Today, two of the Lira girls — Nancy Bernardino and Monica Lira Bravo — are shaping cradle-to-career decisions for Dallas ISD and Dallas College.
So very many Latinas are doing big things in this city, even while its archetypical leadership roles remain dominated by a demographic that looks nothing like them. But as a new generation of leaders emerges, Monica and Nancy are the kind of women who will shape Dallas for a very long time.
I knew of these two women’s achievements, but until earlier this month, I had no idea they were sisters nor knew anything about their personal stories.
Nancy was leading an academic turnaround at Pleasant Grove’s John Quincy Adams Elementary when we met in 2014. She went on to open Solar Preparatory School for Girls in Old East Dallas and earned principal of the year honors in 2019 for her visionary work at this phenomenally successful campus.
Promoted to the central office a year ago to oversee DISD’s six single-gender schools, she also is shepherding the August launch of the district’s first hybrid campus — part virtual and part in-person with an emphasis not on Zoom but on out-of-the-classroom learning.
I first met Monica in 2016 when I was part of the editorial team that endorsed her successful bid for a Dallas College trustee seat. An influential immigration attorney with her own practice for a decade, Monica now chairs the college’s board.
She’s leading her colleagues through tricky transition waters after chancellor Joe May announced his upcoming retirement. The announcement came as the former Dallas County Community College District continues its merger of seven schools into a single Dallas College.
The trustees earlier this month selected executive vice chancellor Justin Lonon as the lone finalist to become the system’s eighth leader, and Monica is heading contract negotiations for that job.
To understand how they have been able to accomplish so much so quickly, Nancy and Monica told me, you have to understand the role their parents and oldest sister, Dominga Lira Mendez, have played in their success.
Delfina and Camerino didn’t need a formal education to ensure that they instilled the right values of faith, hard work and service into their five children.
“Our parents modeled being such good human beings,” said Nancy, who was 1 year old when her parents left Mexico. “They pushed and supported. We didn’t have the option to not go to school or not do our work.”
Dominga also made big sacrifices, putting her own education and career dreams on hold for her sisters and brother. She recently graduated with her master’s in education administration and will teach in Mesquite ISD this fall.
After relocating to Dallas from their village in northern Guanajuato, Mexico, the family spent years living in one cramped rental after another. Once they gained legal residency status, Delfina and Camerino were able to buy a home in the Owenwood neighborhood, just south of Interstate 30, where they still live.
For years, Delfina spent her nights cleaning offices to supplement Camerino’s income and still ensure the girls were never alone. But after their second-oldest daughter, Marta, was struck by leukemia in her teens, Delfina became a round-the-clock nurse.
“Looking back, I don’t know how my parents made so much happen for us,” Nancy said. “How did you raise a family on so little money?”
Nancy’s desire to close disparity gaps dates all the way back to her fifth-grade year at O.M. Roberts Elementary. Teachers there, she recalled, had far lower expectations than what had been expected at her previous elementary on the north side of Interstate 30.
“I didn’t hear uplifting messages about what my future could be. It was just about making it through,” she said. “For the first time, I was able to see just how different students are treated in different parts of the city.”
When Dominga learned from a friend about scholarship opportunities to some of Dallas’ best private schools, she dragged both Nancy and later Monica to the testing center and told the girls that, if they qualified, there was no going back to their neighborhood schools.
Nancy started at Hockaday her ninth-grade year; Monica also began as a freshman. Each morning, their deeply devout mother would say a blessing over the girls before they boarded DART for two long bus rides. Rarely were they home until after 6 p.m.
Monica still shudders about the academic wakeup call at Hockaday. Always a voracious reader and a pre-honors middle-schooler, she entered the exclusive school with a lot of confidence.
When her world history teacher immediately assigned 90 pages of reading to be finished overnight, Monica was convinced it was a joke. She wound up with a C in that course, the first in her life, on her first trimester report card.
“I began to work my butt off. I would do homework until 10 p.m.,” she said.
Nancy laughed that she wasn’t nearly the dedicated student Monica was. “Dominga and Mom had to come to a lot of conferences about me … about how serious I was about even wanting to be at Hockaday. But I graduated and got into SMU, so it worked out.”
Monica later followed her big sister to SMU before going to Texas Tech for her law degree. Both sisters confess — with a lot of laughter now — that Nancy wasn’t the kindest to her younger sister in high school and college, but that’s all changed.
Nancy, 42, looks up to Monica, who is about to turn 40, for persevering through her fears and opening her own law firm a decade ago. “She does everything with excellence, Nancy said. “You are never gonna get less than the best from her.”
Monica said she was always motivated by the need to keep up with Nancy. “She is that person who is really smart, gets things done and is great under pressure.”
Even as Nancy and Monica raise their own children, they feel a responsibility to step out to be the kind of role models that so many young Latinas are looking for. This month, the oldest of Nancy’s four boys graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School and the first of Monica’s three girls received her pre-K diploma at Solar Prep.
Monica said that the only Latina she ever heard about in a leadership role — “and it probably wasn’t until I was at SMU” — was Adelfa Callejo, the late Dallas lawyer and civil rights advocate. “Now I’m the chair of her foundation board.”
Nancy said that one of the reasons she pursued her doctorate was “to show little girls that they could do it, especially little girls who are Latina.”
A lot of negative messages and cultural messages get thrown out about young Latinas, Nancy said, and she is determined that those don’t stick.
Former Dallas ISD board member Miguel Solis first met Monica more than a decade ago. He told me he recognized immediately that she was an up-and-coming young Latina with great leadership skills.
As part of the team that launched the Latino Center for Leadership Development in 2015 to help develop a new generation of candidates for local public office, Miguel watched Monica go through its inaugural class and run successfully for office.
Miguel had huge interest in out-of-the-ordinary models such as Solar Prep, which was in his district, and he recognized very quickly that “Nancy was going to make or break the concept because she was the first to roll one out.”
But it was much later that Miguel realized Nancy and Monica are actually siblings.
“I’m fascinated that this family came from Mexico and produced two sisters who have done such compelling work and leadership,” he said. “What special educational diet did they feed them as girls?
“What they have accomplished to this point is just the beginning.”
