Althea Bustos Ito

Althea Bustos Ito (she/her/siya) is a proud first-generation, low-income (FGLI) Filipina American undergraduate student and emerging education researcher committed to advancing educational equity and dismantling the structural inequities that shape K–12 and higher education. She is pursuing a double major in Comparative Ethnic Studies and Educational Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, where her work centers on student retention, belonging, and the ways schools can serve as sites of healing, community power, and transformation. Althea is currently an Undergraduate Research Apprentice, where her work focuses on expansive inclusion and supporting the development of frameworks for educational leaders and practitioners to reduce exclusionary discipline and strengthen school ecologies. Her research interests sit at the intersection of practice, policy, and racial justice, with a particular focus on how schools can build relationship-rich environments that affirm and sustain BIPOC students. In addition to her research, Althea has experience in student advocacy and coalition-building across the UC system, with work centered on institutional accountability and expanding resources for students from multiply marginalized backgrounds. Grounded in her lived experience as a FGLI student navigating educational silos and opportunity gaps, she draws her purpose from her community, her elders, and the legacies of educators and organizers who have long fought for liberation. Ultimately, she believes education must honor student agency, protect joy, and make room for young people’s embodied futurities to be imagined, nurtured, and made possible.